Bound in captivity: intersections of viking raiding, slaving, and settlement in Western Europe during the ninth century CE

ABSTRACT

The Viking Age (c. 750–1050 CE) was a time of extensive upheaval and disruption across the northern world. From the late eighth century, historical sources indicate that viking groups were engaging in both short-term and extended campaigns of raiding and plunder. In addition to seeking portable wealth and commodities, it is apparent that raiders also sought captives, many of whom were taken and held in encampments where they were ransomed, exploited, or sold into slavery. While these sites served an important function as defensive strongholds and staging posts for viking raiding activity, recent studies have demonstrated that they were also militarized centres of production and exchange that, in some cases, became nodal marketplaces that were embedded within both regional and long-distance networks of communication and trade. Focusing in particular on the ninth century, this study will examine the ways in which captive-taking and slaving intersected with the emergence and development of these locales, as well as the role of these activities in shaping wider processes of communication, diplomacy, and cross-cultural interaction within landscapes of conflict and settlement.

KEYWORDS:

• Viking age
• raiding
• settlement
• slavery
• captives
• trade

Introduction

The Viking Age (c. 750–1050 CE), was a time of extensive upheaval and disruption across the northern world. Beginning in the late eighth century, historical documents attest to a surge of viking raids into the British Isles and Continental Europe. In addition to seeking portable wealth and other materials, many of these groups are also recorded as taking captives. The scale of the raids escalated rapidly, and by the mid-ninth century viking fleets are recorded as taking hundreds and perhaps even thousands of people captive as part of what appear to be well-organized and coordinated raiding ventures. While at least some of these individuals were ransomed back to their communities, others were taken and held by their captors, to be exploited in various roles or sold into slavery.

To date, the slaving systems of the Viking Age have not been afforded adequate attention from archaeologists or historians. While several landmark publications have sought to shed light on the institution of slavery in Scandinavia itself, fewer attempts have been made to examine how this practice intersected with the wider sphere of viking activity overseas.¹ Where previous discussions have taken place, these have focused almost exclusively on slave-trafficking within overarching contexts of long-distance trade and exchange.² Few studies have attempted, in contrast, to explore the origins and experiences of captives themselves, or to examine how slaving was actively mobilized as a ‘strategy’ that fed into the objectives of viking raiding groups operating in the field.³ Similar little thought has been given to the ways in which this practice intersected with and impacted longer-term processes of political, social, and cultural interaction in regions subject to viking attacks.

In order to address these issues, the current study will critically examine the role of captive-taking and slaving within wider historical trajectories of viking raiding and settlement in Western Europe. The paper will focus in particular on the ninth century, a period when large viking fleets (and subsequent waves of settlers) are recorded not only as engaging in protracted raiding campaigns, but also as attempting to establish permanent landholdings in regions such as Britain and Ireland.⁴ The study will investigate evidence for slaving within a key historical context: the encampments that were established and inhabited by viking groups engaged in seasonal and longer-term raiding campaigns. Once viewed simply as defensive strongholds and staging posts for raiding activity, archaeological investigations have now demonstrated that these camps were in fact complex multi-functional centres of habitation, production, and exchange that have been described, in some cases, as ‘proto-urban’ settlements.⁵ By examining the circumstances under which captives were brought to and held within these locales, the study aims to highlight the ways in which captive-taking and slaving was strategically managed by viking raiding groups. In addition, the author contends that this activity played a crucial and as-yet currently overlooked role in the emergence of some encampments as foci of cross-cultural interaction, trade, and diplomacy within contested landscapes.

The discussion in this article draws upon a range of historical sources. Although the study will focus in particular on developments taking place during the ninth century, the arguments made here will at times be contextualized and expanded by way of reference to accounts of slaving dating more broadly from the late eighth- through to the eleventh centuries. The reason for this approach lies in the exiguity of the evidence for slaving practices. While surviving historical sources do provide explicit descriptions of viking raiders taking, exploiting, and trafficking captives, these are fleeting and individually offer few detailed insights into how this activity was managed and operationalized. It is necessary, therefore, to draw on numerous sources with a view to constructing a ‘composite’ image of slaving practices that may speak broadly to the realities of the period. It goes without saying, however, that it is impossible to construct a well-defined ‘model’ for this activity given that the objectives of individual raiding fleets (and the smaller autonomous groups operating within them) were idiosyncratic. As such, we cannot arbitrarily assume that the fleets described in historical sources adhered to any form of coherent ‘strategy’ that extended beyond the immediate need to secure basic provisions and supplies.⁶ While the choice to adopt an extended chronological perspective on slaving practices therefore runs the risk of homogenizing viking activity, it is necessary to draw together numerous threads of evidence in order to pose some initial hypotheses that can be tested as part of future research.

As with any study involving the use of historical texts, the reader should be mindful of source critical issues that affect our reading of these documents. Many served as pieces of political or ecclesiastical propaganda, and as such they provide only a fragmentary and highly-partial perspective on events taking place within specific regions. In addition, it is evident that chroniclers often borrowed from one another or made use of common works as a means of bringing their own narratives up to date, meaning that there must have existed numerous versions of individual texts that do not survive today. In this, it is important to recognize that the texts that we have access to offer merely a fossilized rendition or snapshot of an intensive and ongoing political dialogue.⁷ As the scribes tasked with compiling these documents often belonged to communities that were themselves targeted by viking groups, it is also possible that these individuals – at times – might have exaggerated the scale and impacts of raiding activity. While the surviving texts must therefore be treated with caution, they offer an invaluable perspective on the institution of captivity and slavery that cannot be extrapolated from other forms of data. In drawing together multiple sources, written by different authors, inhabiting different regions, at different times, the study aims to account for source critical issues by identifying consistent patterns of behaviour that may offer insights into the ways that slaving practices manifested across time and space.

Before continuing, some notes on terminology. In this article, the term ‘viking’ is used not as an ethnonym, but rather to describe groups of primarily Scandinavian seaborne raiders and settlers that sought to acquire wealth and land through the use or threat of violence. The article will address an array of sites, ranging from temporary camps that were perhaps occupied only for a single winter to those that were inhabited on a more permanent basis. In recognition of their diverse origins, uncertainties surrounding their original intended function, and variable lengths of occupation, these sites are collectively referred to here as ‘encampments’. In Ireland, the encampments established by viking groups are described in contemporaneous chronicles as longphuirt (sing. longphort), and while this term encodes its own issues it will be retained here for use with specific reference to Irish sites.⁸

In addition, it is necessary to clarify the use of terminology relating to ‘captivity’ and ‘enslavement’. While these terms are related, they are not considered as synonymous; rather, in this article, they refer to two connected but nevertheless disparate states-of-being. As this study is largely concerned with raiding and warfare, I will use the term ‘captive’ to describe the women, children, and men that were violently removed from their homes by viking groups and held, ransomed, exploited, and sold within the raiders’ encampments.⁹ Given the uncertainty surrounding their eventual fate, it would be incorrect to characterize these people simply as being ‘enslaved’. In many cultures, enslavement is nominally defined as a permanent (i.e. lifelong) condition that is enforced through processes such as deracination, commodification and sale, marking or branding, or a loss of identity and legal autonomy – a process described by sociologist Orlando Patterson as ‘social death’. The stigma associated with being enslaved, furthermore, often cannot be removed even by way of manumission.¹⁰ Captivity, in contrast, can be considered as a more variable condition. While some captives become enslaved, others do not, and in this particular context the situation of many individuals may be considered to have been impermanent if they were fortunate enough to be ransomed by their home communities. Although this distinction is over-simplified, it nevertheless allows us to acknowledge and examine the disparate fates of those taken and held by viking raiders. Note, however, that for ease of reading the term ‘slaver’ will be retained in order to describe members of viking groups engaging in captive-taking and exploitation, ransom extortion, and slave-trafficking – practices that are described collectively within this article as ‘slaving’.

The context of captivity: viking encampments in Western Europe

In order to explore the ways in which slaving practices intersected with raiding practices and daily life within viking encampments, it is first necessary to examine the lifecycle of these sites and set them within their wider historical context. The earliest sites, which have not been identified archaeologically but to which tentative references can be found in English charters dating from around 800, may have comprised little more than lightly-defended enclosures or campsites where viking groups engaging in seasonal raiding gathered and redistributed plunder before returning home to Scandinavia.¹¹ From the mid-ninth century, however, Insular and Continental chronicles begin to document large viking fleets that are recorded as operating in the field for years at a time. Many of these groups maintained a transient lifestyle that revolved around the occupation of temporary encampments that are often described by archaeologists as ‘winter camps’ while others, whether by happenstance or design, established bases that were inhabited either continuously or intermittently for years or even decades. These sites were generally located at strategic points in the landscape, either on the coast at or near to the mouths of major rivers, or further inland on rivers, tributaries, and lakes. They were often sited on the borders of polities and kingdoms, a situation that allowed raiding groups to exert their influence over local landscapes and intervene in regional politics.

In the last twenty years, significant efforts have been made to better understand these sites and the groups inhabiting them. In England, several encampments have now been identified at Torksey, Repton, and Aldwark. All three sites have been linked with a viking force described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a ‘Great Army’, which was active in the region from 865–78.¹² In Ireland, two longphuirt located at Annagassan, Co. Louth, and Woodstown, Co. Waterford, have been excavated. While the exact location of the original longphort at Dublin remains a matter of debate, extensive archaeological work has been undertaken within the area of the later Hiberno-Norse town.¹³ Although there have yet to be any targeted investigations of Continental encampments, the general location of a number of sites can be inferred from historical documentation. Several possible sites have been identified on the Cotentin Peninsular, as well as in Normandy and Aquitaine, but a lack of targeted archaeological investigation means that a ‘viking’ connection to these locales remains unproven.¹⁴

The lifespan of the encampments varied greatly. Those established by the Great Army in England are recorded as being occupied only for a single winter, though questions remain concerning the possibility of longer-term occupation in some cases. While many of the camps occupied by raiding groups operating on the Continent were similarly short-lived, surviving historical sources attest to the presence of a permanent viking base on the Loire during the 860s-70s, and others at Jeufosse and Oissel were occupied for extended periods during the 850s and 860s.¹⁵ In Ireland there is good historical evidence for the long-term occupation of several longphuirt sites, with those established at Dublin (est. 841), Limerick (est. c. 845), Wexford (first noted in 892), and Cork (first noted in 866) all evolving to become permanent towns. The historically-unattested longphort at Woodstown has been shown archaeologically to have been permanently occupied from the mid-ninth- to the mid-tenth century. The emphasis on continuity often ascribed to Irish sites, however, should not be overstated. Many longphuirt – such as that at Annagassan (est. 841) – did not become permanent settlements, and the transition from longphort to town itself remains little understood.¹⁶

While the encampments established by viking forces were once viewed primarily as defensive locales, these sites are now understood as having fulfilled a range of roles. In England, the presence of women and children among the Great Army is attested by burials at Repton and a nearby cremation cemetery at Heath Wood, with historical documentation clearly indicating that the viking fleets operating in Europe at this time comprised not only combatants but also their families.¹⁷ The largest of these sites measured dozens of hectares in size, and it is clear that they were home to large populations engaging in both raiding and subsistence activities.¹⁸ A number of sites have yielded evidence for a range of activities including ship-repair, wood-, textile-, glass-, and metal working, experimentation with coin production, and subsistence and leisure activities such as fishing and gaming.¹⁹ Evidence for exchange and the processing of gold and silver bullion similarly indicates that they were embedded within both regional and longer-distance exchange networks despite retaining a function as active raiding bases. Indeed, the identification of well-furnished ‘warrior burials’ at Repton, Woodstown, and within the environs of the Dublin longphort emphasize the militarized context within which this activity took place.²⁰

That encampments also functioned as marketplaces is not surprising. The subsistence needs of any viking fleet were extensive, and it is unlikely that a static force of hundreds or thousands of people would have survived even a single winter without resupplying. In addition, the inhabitants of these sites needed to procure not just food but also raw materials such as iron and wool that were used to produce and repair equipment.²¹ Plunder and foraging represented two obvious means of resolving this issue. A lease of estate from Beddington in Surrey, England, dating to 900 but likely describing conditions during the 870s describes the landscape as having been ‘stripped bare by heathen men’ – presumably elements of the Great Army.²² The Annals of St. Bertin similarly describe a viking force encamped at Angers, France, in 873 as ‘turning cultivated land into a desert’, while another operating in the Hesbaye, Belgium, in 885 is recorded in the Annals of Fulda as ‘gathering crops of various kind together’ in preparation for the winter.²³ Evidence for the presence of cattle, pigs, and sheep or goats at Annagassan and the recovery of ploughshares at Torksey may attest to efforts to develop animal husbandry and agriculture.²⁴ Several sites including Torksey, Repton, and the Dublin longphort, furthermore, were established in the vicinity of ecclesiastical institutions and royal estates, indicating that some viking groups targeted locales that they knew to be well supplied with stores. Peace treaties concluded with regional elites also included demands of foodstuffs as tribute.²⁵

Other viking groups, however, sought to obtain supplies through trade. In the Annals of St. Bertin and the Annals of Fulda we see two viking armies, encamped at Angers in 873 and Asselt in 882 respectively, as requesting the right to hold markets as part of peace negotiations.²⁶ While it might seem strange that local populations would seek to trade with viking forces, these arrangements are likely to have been mutually beneficial. The longphort at Dublin appears to have enjoyed a productive relationship with its hinterland from the outset, as indicated by evidence to suggest that cattle, grain, and cereals were brought to the site – perhaps as tribute but also quite possibly as a result of trade.²⁷ The establishment of markets at these sites would have also provided both the inhabitants and local populations with access to foreign and exotic goods. Finds of lead weights used in bullion exchange in addition to silver Islamic dirham coins, which came to Scandinavia and Western Europe via the eastern trade routes, have been made at a number of sites including Dublin, Annagassan, Torksey, Aldwark, and Woodstown, indicating a mercantile concern oriented specifically towards long-distance trading networks.²⁸ The materials obtained as part of this trade included not just silver but also resources such as iron ore, amber, and glass.²⁹ The inhabitants also likely sought non-local organic goods that do not survive archaeologically, and by way of reference we should note the cargo of walrus ivory, walrus and seal hide rope, feathers, down, and furs that accompanied the Norwegian merchant Ohthere to the court of Alfred of Wessex in c. 890.³⁰ It is possible that not all of these goods were intended for use within the camps themselves. In addition to facilitating subsistence, participation in long-distance trade allowed the inhabitants to act as middlemen in supplying foreign goods to local populations, presumably in such a way that they undercut existing trade networks.³¹

If we are to view viking encampments not merely as militarized strongholds but also centres of production and exchange, then this raises several important questions that require consideration. By what means, for example, did static viking forces manage to secure provisions and raw materials from regional populations, and how were they able to gain access to goods and materials procured via long-distance exchange networks? What factors, furthermore, underpinned the emergence and development of at least some encampments as nodal points of interaction and settlement within wider regional landscapes? Certainly it is possible that viking groups were able to source wealth and locally-produced commodities through plunder, and these goods could have been either circulated internally or reintroduced back into local economies through trade. The establishment of markets would have similarly served not only to facilitate peaceful exchange with regional communities but also attract visiting merchants who might have sought local commodities such as timber, salt, and wine. The author contends, however, that slaving also played a crucial and currently overlooked role in the emergence of some of these sites as foci of cross-cultural interaction, trade, and diplomacy. Captives were not only a valuable commodity in their own right, but they could also be used as leverage to extract additional wealth from local populations through the payment of ransoms. Given the evidence for the operation of several slave-trafficking networks across Europe at this time, raiding groups were well-positioned to procure non-local goods by supplying captives to regional and inter-regional markets.³² In pursuing a critical re-reading of the available sources, this study aims to situate narratives of captivity at the centre of both short- and longer-term processes of raiding and settlement, and in doing so to highlight the different ways in which this activity was managed and operationalized by viking groups.

Intersections of raiding and slaving

Having briefly explored the context and function of viking encampments, we can now examine the ways in which slaving intersected with and influenced the modus operandi of raiding groups themselves. When we consult the available documentary sources it quickly becomes clear that captive-taking was not practised indiscriminately, but rather that this activity was carefully planned and executed with a view to achieving specific goals. With that, it is possible to identify some broad trends in slaving practices that directly impacted the ways in which captive groups were exploited. The number of captives taken in any individual raid would have of course varied depending on a range of factors including the size of a raiding force, their ability to secure, maintain, and transport captives across land or sea, and the threat of retaliation by local populations. Some raiding groups were evidently content to take small numbers of captives alongside other forms of plunder. This can be inferred from a letter written by the monk Alcuin to Bishop Higbald of Lindisfarne in 793, in which the former alludes to the abduction of a number of boys during the viking attack on the monastery earlier that year.³³ Piratical attacks on shipping would have similarly yielded a mixed prey of captives and commodities.³⁴ Other groups, however, engaged in more extensive slaving operations, as seen in records of attacks on major Continental settlements such as Dorestad, Quentovic, Nantes, and Seville in 834, 842, 843, and 844 respectively, and large-scale raids taking place in Ireland in 820, 830, and 835.³⁵ While accounts of exceptional raids must be treated with caution, the large number of captives being taken during these encounters implies that viking raiders were well-equipped and practised in taking and securing prisoners.

When we examine these accounts in more detail, it is possible to identify several interesting patterns in slaving practices. While the potential scale of the attacks noted above can be taken to imply that viking raiding groups were not always particularly discerning when it came to selecting captives, it seems that at least some specifically sought to capture high-ranking Church officials and members of aristocratic or ruling families, often for the purposes of ransom extortion. While men are most-frequently cited as being targeted in this way, there is also evidence to suggest that high-status women were taken by raiders, as seen for example in the ninth-century hagiography The Life of Findan, which describes an aristocratic woman – the sister of the noble Leinsterman Findan – being taken captive and ransomed by a viking group in Ireland.³⁶ In the eleventh-century Andalusian geographical treatise Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik we also find a retrospective (and not necessarily reliable) account of a viking raid on Mazimma, Morocco, in 859, in which two women from the royal harem were taken and held captive until they were ransomed by the Emir of Córdoba.³⁷

In addition to targeting individual members of the aristocracy, viking groups also recognized the value ascribed to the wider monastic community in general. Historical sources are replete with records of attacks on monastic establishments, with notable examples including the capture of at least sixty-eight individuals from the monastery at St. Wandrille, situated on the River Seine in Normandy, in 841, and also the taking of 280 clerics (including the prior) from the monastery at Kildare, Ireland, in 886.³⁸ In England, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes a rare reference to the capture of both consecrated men and women during a raid on Canterbury in 1011.³⁹ Like higher-ranking members of the Church, religious personnel were often targeted for the purposes of ransom. The ‘value’ ascribed to clerics is evidenced in a description of a viking raid on the abbey at Prüm, Germany, in 892, in which the chronicler Regino describes the majority of the servants of the abbey as being killed while most of the monks were led away into captivity.⁴⁰ While the servants themselves were not without value as a potential source of labour or objects of sale, the preferential targeting of monks in this case may speak to the practical choices made by slavers looking to extract the highest possible ransom payments from the Church and secular rulers.

Another observable practice is the apparent targeting of certain demographic groups for captivity. The taking of women and children, in particular, is highlighted in several contemporaneous sources, including accounts not only of the aforementioned viking raid on Seville in 844 but also those on Étar, Ireland, in 821 and Walcheren, Frisia, in 837.⁴¹ In 873, the Annals of Fulda similarly record the leader of a viking force operating in Ostergau, Frisia, as threatening to take captive the women and children of the local population if they did not provide tribute.⁴² While the taking of large numbers of women and children may simply reflect the fact that men of fighting age are more likely to have been killed outright during raids, we should not discount the possibility that these sources preserve a record of deliberate behavioural patterns that reflected both the needs of viking groups and the broader demands of (inter-)regional markets. Despite this, it is important to emphasize that not all viking groups were equally discriminating – as noted above, records of attacks on monastic institutions indicate that men were certainly taken captive too, and in addition we should consider that captives taken during formal battles or attacks on shipping are more likely to have been male.⁴³ While the emphasis placed on the abduction of women and children may in some cases reflect the efforts of contemporaneous chroniclers to mobilize a literary trope in order to highlight the barbarity of viking groups, that these episodes occur only infrequently may nevertheless suggest that this was a deliberate tactic that was occasionally utilized by raiding fleets in order to achieve specific objectives.

In sum, while the circumstances surrounding any individual raid or raiding campaign must have varied, it is clear that slaving was neither a peripheral element of viking activity and nor was it conducted indiscriminately. The deliberate targeting of specific individuals and groups for captivity suggests a level of preparedness and sophistication that is not usually attributed to viking raiders during this period. When we consider, furthermore, that the scale of slaving is almost certainly under-represented in the historical record given that many raids are likely to have gone unreported, this activity must be considered as having served a key function in allowing raiding groups to achieve various goals. With this in mind, we can now consider the conditions that underpinned experiences of captivity within the raiders’ encampments, and in doing so explore the wider implications of captive-taking both for daily life within these locales and also their longer-term development within local and regional landscapes.

Situating captives within viking encampments

The use of encampments for the holding of captives is clearly attested from the early ninth century onwards. In Ireland, captives are often recorded as being held at the raiders’ ships (Irish longaibh) – something that likely involved incarceration within some kind of encampment on the coast. This appears to have been the case in 845, for example, when the Annals of Ulster describe the bishop Forannán and his followers as being taken to Limerick following their capture during a raid on Cluain Comarda, and further specific references to this practice are made in Irish sources in 829, 830, 832, 839, and 844 (among others).⁴⁴ In 914 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle similarly describes a viking group in England as taking Bishop Cameleac to their ships (OE to scipum) on the River Severn following a raid on Archenfield.⁴⁵ Continental sources describe captives being held within fortified raiding bases, as seen for example in 882 when the Annals of Fulda record a viking force at Asselt taking captive a number of people who had entered their camp in order to trade.⁴⁶ A description of shackled captives being held in huts within an encampment is provided by the Frankish chronicler Adrevald, while Abbo Cernuus describes Christians taken by a viking army in 887 as being ‘bound for the sword, or bondage, and soon to endure life in their camps’.⁴⁷ The viking force described by ibn Ḥayyān as sacking Seville in 844 is recorded as holding a large number of women and children at a base located on the island of Qabtīl (Isla Menor) in the Guadalquivir river.⁴⁸

When we turn to the surviving sources it is clear that many of the high-profile (i.e. historically-visible) captives being held at these sites were taken for ransom. While high-ranking members of the aristocracy and Churchmen were, as noted above, likely targeted specifically for this purpose, some raiding groups are recorded as also offering lower-status families the chance to redeem their kin. Thus in 844 we see the viking force at Qabtīl offering up for ransom the captives recently taken from Seville, while captives abducted during an attack on Nantes in 843 are described in a tenth-century manuscript from Angers as being either ransomed or sold into slavery.⁴⁹ The viking force at Asselt in 882 is similarly recorded as holding to ransom the captives that they had earlier tricked into entering their encampment.⁵⁰

Unfortunately, historical sources almost never provide detailed insights into the conduct of ransom negotiations. It is evident, however, that the size and nature of the ransom demanded, the length of negotiations, and their outcome varied greatly. Those individuals who possessed sufficient status and wealth might have stood a relatively good chance of surviving the experience. The reappearance of the aforementioned Bishop Forannán in the Annals of Ulster in 846 implies that he was successfully ransomed following his abduction the previous year (though what became of his non-aristocratic companions is unknown), and in England Bishop Cameleac is recorded as being ransomed by King Edward the Elder for the sum of forty pounds (presumably of silver).⁵¹ The ransoming of religious personnel en masse can be seen in the redemption of the captives taken from St. Wandrille in 841 and also following another raid on Kildare in 964.⁵² For the Church and secular rulers, the ransom of clerics was a matter of significant concern. While the successful ransom of captives functioned as a display of political leadership and the ability of rulers to redeem (if not protect) their subjects, failure to do so represented a dereliction of responsibility.⁵³ The habitual targeting of these groups, furthermore, implies that viking raiders were deeply aware of the lengths to which elites would go in order to ransom their own.

Although we today might consider ransom extortion to be a practice that was removed from broader processes of enslavement and trafficking, for viking raiders themselves the distinction between these may have been negligible. Captives were a ubiquitous resource that could be accessed in almost any region, and as such it might have been considered expedient to simply ‘sell’ these individuals back to their communities in exchange for more easily-portable forms of wealth. The additional stress that the maintenance of captives placed on food supplies and resources also means that ransom extortion would have allowed viking fleets such as that encamped at Qabtīl, which was operating at a distance from its home base in Brittany, to offset the burden of transporting captives to a viable marketplace. When we consider the sums paid out to viking raiders through ransom payments, furthermore, it is apparent that this activity represented a significant source of income for some groups. Members of the aristocracy, in particular, were ransomed for large quantities of wealth, and in this it is possible to draw a contrast between the forty pounds (of silver?) paid for the redemption of Bishop Cameleac in 917 with the twenty-six pounds of silver paid for the sixty-eight monastic captives taken from St. Wandrille in 841. In a more extreme case, the Frankish king Charles the Bald is recorded as paying a ransom of 686 pounds of gold and 3250 pounds of silver for the ransom of Louis, Abbot of St. Denis, in 858.⁵⁴ The collective ransom of lower-status captives, however, could also yield significant quantities of wealth, as seen for example in the Annales Cambriae, which records that up to 2000 captives taken during a raid on Anglesey by an allied viking and Manx-Hebridean force in 987 were ransomed for a penny a head over the course of two years.⁵⁵

In addition to acquiring portable wealth, the ransom of captives also allowed viking raiders to extort a range of other materials from their victims. Insights into this practice are provided by church records from eleventh-century Portugal, in which two women are noted as selling their property in order to pay a loan-lender who had fronted the sum necessary to ransom themselves from a viking force encamped in the vicinity of Ovar in 1026. The payment was made in goods equivalent to seventy modios, a sum measured in volume or weight, which included a wolf-skin blanket, a sword, a shirt, three scarves, a cow, and three modios of ground salt.⁵⁶ This particular transaction is especially informative as it provides an almost-uniquely detailed insight into the diverse needs of viking raiders. While surviving Continental and Insular annals generally refer to slavers receiving ransom payments in the form of silver (and less-frequently gold), here we see viking groups accepting a range of materials for the redemption of captives. The receiving of even basic necessities such as food and commodities would have allowed raiding groups to secure the provisions that were necessary to sustain themselves while encamped in hostile landscapes, while also providing them with goods that could be redistributed or sold.⁵⁷ If managed carefully, this strategy had the potential to contribute to a fleet’s ability to operate independently of a permanent home base, thereby offering them an obvious strategic and tactical advantage in terms of mobility. The acceptance of such payments also made it possible for raiders to extort ransom payments from families that lacked stores of silver or other wealth; as such, these tactics could have been used to strip entire communities of their possessions.⁵⁸

For those captives who could not be ransomed, a variety of fates awaited. Some captives such as Congalach son of Echaid, abducted during a viking attack on Loughbrickland in Ireland, in 832, are recorded as being killed at the raiders’ encampments, presumably when ransom negotiations broke down.⁵⁹ In another high-profile case we see Ælfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, being killed after he refused to pay a ransom or allow one to be paid for his release following his capture in 1011.⁶⁰ Death, however, was not inevitable, as even those captives who could not be ransomed retained a potential value as a form of diplomatic leverage, making them liable to being traded or gifted to another viking group, while others may have been sold into slavery. This may have been the case with the Irish Abbot Coibhdeanach, who is recorded as drowning in the sea off Dalkey Island while trying to flee his captors in 940. Coibhdeanach had been captured during a raid by the Waterford vikings the year before, and it has been argued that he was sold or gifted to a group from Dublin following a breakdown of ransom negotiations.⁶¹

While ransom extortion features most heavily in historical sources as a motive for the taking of captives, there is also evidence to indicate that some of those held within viking encampments were exploited as a source of unfree labour. Although surviving sources unsurprisingly make few explicit references to captives being used for these purposes, the aforementioned viking force recorded as operating in the Hesbaye in 885 is described as establishing a camp and setting aside ‘for their service those men and women whom they could find’.⁶² The desire to retain captives for the purposes of exploitation may also be implied by the Annals of St. Bertin, which in describing the conclusion of a peace treaty between the Carolingians and vikings encamped on the Seine in 866 records that Frankish captives who had previously escaped their captors were either returned or redeemed at a price decided by the latter.⁶³ While the extent to which captives might have been sought for use as a labour force is uncertain given the focus of contemporaneous chroniclers on documenting high-profile ransom cases, there was certainly scope for them to perform various services within these sites.⁶⁴ The demands of everyday life within an encampment meant that activities such as ship repair, carpentry, animal husbandry, and metal- or textile-working – many of which have been detected archaeologically at known sites – would have been practiced constantly. Some captives therefore might have been tasked with tending to animals or performing agricultural labour and other menial tasks. Finds of loom weights and spindle whorls from Woodstown, Torksey, and Aldwark attest to spinning and weaving activity – presumably for the production and repair not only of clothing but also perhaps sails. This was a time-consuming and highly-specialized process that could have been streamlined by the use of an expanded female labour force.⁶⁵ Captive women and children, furthermore, were especially vulnerable to sexual violence and exploitation, and this likely represented a salient aspect of life for those taken to serve as concubines and servants within ‘domestic’ settings. While we should be careful not to overemphasize this aspect of captivity given its potential to drive discussions of victimhood over agency, acts of rape and corporeal abuse undoubtedly occurred.⁶⁶ Other captives still might have been distributed among raiding groups as a form of plunder. During the Viking Age, the power of elites rested primarily on their ability to maintain an armed following, and the regular rewarding of retinues with high-quality weaponry and other forms of wealth represented a key means by which war-leaders developed and cultivated their reputation. A tentative reference to this behaviour can be seen in the skaldic poem Hrafnsmál (v.16), which describes the ninth-century Norwegian king Haraldr inn Hárfagri (Harald Fairhair) as rewarding his warriors with gold and women who had been captured in warfare.⁶⁷ The redistribution of captives as ‘gifts’ to subordinates could have therefore allowed war-leaders to maintain their position and power within the heavily-militarized and volatile power structures that underpinned the operation of viking raiding fleets.⁶⁸

In addition to exploiting captives as a source of labour and socio-political capital, at least some viking groups appear to have engaged directly in slave-trafficking. As a form of plunder, captives held an intrinsic value as commodities, and the noted efforts of some raiding groups to secure large numbers of prisoners potentially speak to their participation in regional- and long-distance networks of trafficking and sale. A reference to viking groups selling captives into slavery is made as part of a list of grievances presented to the Frankish emperor Charles the Bald in the Annals of Fulda in 858, and in the Annals of Flodoard of Reims we find a similar description of a viking fleet selling captives taken during raids on Brittany.⁶⁹ A more vivid description of these practices is provided by the Life of Findan, which describes the protagonist Findan as being sold repeatedly from one raiding group to another in the time immediately following his capture by viking mercenaries.⁷⁰ If we turn to the encampments themselves, then explicit references to slave-trafficking taking place within these sites can be found in the Annals of St. Vaast and the Annals of Fulda, which in 882 record viking forces encamped at Condé and Asselt as selling or sending captives away into slavery.⁷¹ Captives initially taken for the purposes of ransom or exploitation were also liable to be sold if their captors either could not or no longer wished to maintain them. This was the case with the aforementioned viking force that is recorded as sacking Nantes in 843, which is described as selling into slavery those captives that they were either unable or chose not to ransom.⁷² While we cannot be sure just how many captives were sold overseas, we should not be surprised to see viking groups actively engaging in this activity where circumstances permitted.⁷³ The locations of even temporary encampments would have been well-known, with their situation on major rivers or the coast facilitating participation in trade.⁷⁴ For viking raiders, the selling and/or sending of captives and plunder abroad offered multiple benefits. In addition to allowing these groups to retain maximum mobility while in the field, the selling of captives also enabled raiding fleets to minimize pressure on their own food stores – something that would have been especially important when overwintering – while also amassing wealth that could be redistributed internally or used to procure supplies. With this, it is possible to draw a tentative link between slave-trafficking and the quantities of silver that have been recovered from known viking encampments. Trade networks, furthermore, also served as conduits of information that enabled raiding groups to communicate both with each other and also diasporic or home communities. This would have allowed other groups including merchants, freebooting raiders, and prospective settlers to locate the encampments at a later date.⁷⁵

In sum, a range of sources attest to the use of viking encampments for the holding, ransoming, and trafficking of captives. Although the limitations of the available data make it is difficult to quantify the scale at which captives were taken and exploited, the documentation of slaving practices across multiple sources implies that this activity was central to daily life within these locales. As noted above, the desire to secure plunder that could be redistributed or reintroduced back into local or regional economies through trade represented an important motivation for securing captives who could be ransomed back to their home communities. Another major factor underpinning ransom extortion might have been the need to secure the provisions necessary for subsistence while operating in hostile landscapes for months or even years at a time. While any encampment would have possessed its own ‘hinterland’ that could be exploited for resources, records of viking forces stripping regional landscapes of crops and also seeking payments of food during peace negotiations implies that access to supplies represented a real logistical concern. Ships, sails, weapons, clothing, and equipment, furthermore, needed to be made and repaired, leading to a demand for raw materials that had to be procured from other parties. Captives represented a commodity that could be sold in exchange for these resources, and they also represented an unfree labour force that could be exploited in production, agriculture, and domestic tasks. In addition, the human body itself was valuable asset – a form of symbolic social capital that could be harnessed to enhance the status of captors or redistributed through systems of gift-exchange. Slaving, therefore, was a practice that had the potential to serve a range of functions within overarching contexts of raiding and daily life in the militarized setting of a viking encampment. Captives should be considered as an important and perhaps even sizable element of the populations inhabiting these sites, a social group whose presence was not only integral to the completion of many daily tasks, but which also had the capacity to impact the nature of interaction between viking raiders and regional populations.

Captivity, interaction, and diplomacy within contested landscapes

The holding of captives within encampments also had implications for the wider impacts of slaving activity as these played out within regional landscapes. If we are initially to approach captive-taking and slaving from a functional, economic perspective, then it is apparent that these practices played a key role in the emergence of certain encampments as nodal places of interaction and trade. The finds of precious metalwork and bullion that have been recovered during archaeological fieldwork at a number of encampments to date indicate that the groups inhabiting these sites were amassing and processing significant quantities of wealth. While some of this material might have been obtained directly through plundering, the evidence outlined above indicates that ransom extortion also played a role in allowing viking groups to source wealth that could be used to procure supplies and materials. These efforts would have been facilitated by the provisions for markets that we see outlined as part of peace treaties with local rulers, and there is no evidence to suggest that elites habitually sought to prevent or limit the access of foreign or local visitors to these sites. Indeed, this interaction may have even been desirable.⁷⁶ Finds of eastern silver and equipment used in bullion transactions indicate that encampments were often plugged into long-distance exchange networks that brought with them increased access to raw materials and high-status or exotic goods. While raiding groups would have benefitted from direct access to these networks themselves, they also had the opportunity to act as middlemen or facilitate transactions between local communities and merchants who sought locally-sourced materials and commodities, including captives. Although the extent to which local communities might have collaborated with viking groups engaging in slave-trading is unclear, it well-known that the institution of slavery itself was deeply embedded within the societies of early medieval Europe, and Continental records attesting to the levying of taxes on the transportation of captives certainly indicate that trafficking took place at a regional level.⁷⁷ The hoards of silver that have been recovered from a number of crannog sites in the Midland region of Ireland, furthermore, must similarly be taken as speaking to some kind of economic interaction between the Dublin vikings and regional elites – in this case the rulers of the Southern Uí Néill.⁷⁸ The capacity for encampments to serve as trading locales opened up new opportunities to offload captives taken during feuds and internecine warfare, and the emergence of nodal marketplaces such as that established at Dublin might have been driven to some extent by their potential role as outlets for slave-trafficking. It is also possible that viking raiders operating as mercenaries negotiated the ‘right’ to take captives as part of their contracts with their employers, and the volatile nature of power politics in many regions would have appealed to raiding groups who were keen to profit from internecine warfare by acting both as mercenaries and brokers who controlled access to slave-trafficking networks.⁷⁹

In addition to serving subsistence needs and providing opportunities for economic exchange, captive-taking also served to embed viking encampments within regional landscapes of movement and communication. The intrinsic value that captives held as members of kinship-networks and communities meant that these individuals could be mobilized as a form of political leverage by raiding groups who sought to extract tribute from local rulers or negotiate favourable terms during diplomatic negotiations. The taking of captives itself served to initiate a complex diplomatic process involving multiple phases of contact and negotiation between viking captors, local elites or communities, and multiple external parties including ransom-payees, interpreters, and loan-lenders.⁸⁰ The ransom price itself may have had to have been negotiated over the course of multiple encounters, each of which would have served to solidify lines of communication between these groups. In some cases the payment of ransoms themselves appears to have involved formal ceremonies attended by official witnesses or dignitaries, as seen in the case of the aforementioned women from Ovar, Portugal, who are recorded as being ransomed in the presence of three local lords.⁸¹ It is not difficult to see how these repeated encounters could have served as a motor for the reorientation of routeways within local landscapes that, when combined with increased mercantile activity, had the potential to precipitate the transformation of some encampments into permanent settlements.

Building on this point, in discussing slaving activity it is also possible to situate viking raiding groups more firmly within landscapes of conflict and power. The taking, ransom, and sale of captives was a matter of aristocratic and royal concern, and the need to engage directly with raiding groups served to draw local rulers and populations into a new sphere of diplomacy that brought with it not only opportunities for peaceful cooperation but also exposure to dangers.⁸² The capacity of viking raiders to act as and quickly switch between the roles of allies, trading partners, and enemies is well-known and, as seen in the aforementioned grievances presented to Charles the Bald in 858, the extent to which elites were able to manage and mitigate the threat posed by slaving had a direct impact on their perceived ability to rule.⁸³ The long-term economic damage incurred by captive-taking and ransom extortion had the potential to cripple entire communities while also weakening the vertical power structures that rulers relied on in order to maintain order.

When we consider developments unfolding across regional landscapes, furthermore, it is evident that the constant threat of viking attack had the potential to drive the emergence of what are described in anthropological literature as ‘predatory landscapes’. These are regions within which the fear of raiding and enslavement precipitates a reshaping of the daily lives and routines of local communities.⁸⁴ The stripping of settlements of wealth, provisions, and captives not only impacted the ability of surviving populations to feed themselves, but it may have also driven more permanent processes of population displacement and the abandonment of tracts of land, as seen both in contemporaneous sources and now, tentatively, in archaeological research.⁸⁵ The long-term economic damage caused by raiding and depopulation may have also played a role in opening up the landscape to more permanent processes of Scandinavian settlement such as those that we observe taking place in England during the late ninth century. In addition, regional elites and rulers were forced to adapt their strategic policies to meet the viking threat, leading in some cases to the initiation of large-scale defensive construction programmes and the mobilizing of field armies – often for extended periods of time – in order to deter and counter incursions.⁸⁶ While the longer-term transformative influence of viking raiding groups on regional landscapes remains little understood, it is likely that the destabilizing impacts of conflict and slaving have been grossly underestimated by scholars who are forced to rely on the incomplete narratives offered by contemporaneous chroniclers. Far from being a marginal aspect of viking raiding activity, slaving should be regarded as a key historical process that played a major role in dramatically reshaping the lives of populations at local, regional, and inter-regional levels.

Finally, it is necessary to consider how slaving might have impacted processes of socio-cultural interaction within longer-term contexts of settlement in regions such as the British Isles. The holding of captives within encampments brought viking groups into sustained contact (in some cases for the first time) with the communities that were their prey, thereby opening up opportunities for dialogue and knowledge-exchange. Captives represented a source of intelligence on local and regional conditions, political structures, and cultural practices that could be exploited by raiders looking to gain an advantage in warfare or diplomacy. If captives were held and exploited on a longer-term basis, then prolonged interaction also brought with it potential for cultural transmission. The use of captives as an unfree labour force in production, for example, provides a context for the fusion of technologies, production techniques, and cultural motifs that later became salient in the creation of new, hybrid material identities such as those noted as emerging within areas subject to Scandinavian settlement.⁸⁷ The extent to which captives might have functioned as agents of social transformation has significant implications for our understanding of wider processes of settlement and polity formation that have yet to be seriously explored.

Final remarks

In sum, the purpose of this article was to explore the ways in which captive-taking and slaving intersected with historical trajectories of viking raiding and settlement in Western Europe. Although the limitations of the available data will always make it is difficult to quantify the extent to which viking groups habitually engaged in slaving, the evident ubiquity of this activity as documented across multiple sources implies that this was central to the salient processes of raiding, trade, and overseas settlement that are so-often taken as characterizing the Viking Age itself. It is clear, furthermore, that viking encampments acted as powerful militarized ‘gateway communities’ or ‘micro-polities’, whose strategic siting at the intersection of terrestrial, fluvial, and maritime communication routes allowed the groups inhabiting them to regulate or even monopolize access to regional resources and trade.⁸⁸ The use of these sites for the holding, exploitation, and sale of captives played a significant role in cementing their status as centres of martial and economic power, which in some cases acted as a catalyst for the emergence of certain locales as influential settlements in their own right. The establishment and use of these sites for slaving also had the potential to impact longer term processes of conflict and cross-cultural interaction at a regional level.

It is possible to identify some potential avenues of future research that deserve consideration. In the first instance, there is a need to better define the archaeology of slaving within militaristic contexts. While clear archaeological evidence attesting to the presence of captives has yet to be identified within known viking encampments, future investigations should account for the presence of these individuals and factor them into discussions of settlement, occupation, trade, and conflict.⁸⁹ In addition, it is necessary to examine slaving as a fundamental element of warfare and diplomacy during the early medieval period. It would be productive, for example, to explore the circumstances in which viking groups favoured the use of violence and coercion over diplomacy, in addition to the ways in which slaving was actively mobilized as a tool for establishing power within overarching contexts of conflict and settlement. We should also endeavour to explore how these activities influenced the wider development of slave-trafficking networks on an inter-regional level. While this article has focused on viking activity in Western Europe, these groups were not operating in geographic isolation; rather, they were actively participating in much-larger, interconnected networks of violence and exchange that require further study. Another point of interest concerns the long-term impacts of the viking presence on the continuing evolution of the settled landscape. It has been suggested, for example, that several Continental towns such as the early medieval settlement at Dorestad in the Netherlands and Antwerp, Belgium, may have been directly influenced both by the regional threat presented by raiding groups and, in some cases, physical occupation by viking forces themselves. The study of these and contemporaneous settlements in the southern Baltic, such as those at Groß Strömkendorf, Germany, and Janów Pomorski/Truso in Poland, furthermore, could offer some interesting comparative insights into the ways in which both militaristic and mercantile activity shaped socio-cultural and political developments across the broader sphere of the so-called ‘Viking diaspora’.⁹⁰ Finally, there is a need to examine mechanisms of cultural transmission and knowledge exchange within contexts of captivity. While there is always a temptation to emphasize the subordination of captive groups within the wider sphere of captor society, cross-cultural studies have highlighted the capacity for captives to act as agents of cultural change within social environments characterized by asymmetrical relationships of power and dependency.⁹¹ Exploring how captives might have been integrated into their captors’ communities therefore has the potential to greatly enhance our understanding of wider processes of settlement and cultural development in regions subject to incursions.

With these suggestions in mind, it is hoped that the discussion in these pages will serve to stimulate further debate on captive-taking and slavery during the early medieval period. Given the fragmentary nature of the available evidence, it is once again necessary to emphasize that the arguments presented here are intended to be preliminary in nature. The institution of slavery has long-been neglected within the sphere of Viking studies – a spectre that has been tacitly ignored by several generations of archaeologists and historians. This should not, however, prevent or dissuade us from exploring this practice. On the contrary, more extensive and targeted studies are clearly necessary if we are ever to fully understand the full implications of captivity and enslavement as an historical phenomenon. At a time when academic studies of the Viking Age are framed by discussions of diaspora and movement, researchers must also acknowledge and give thought to experiences of forced migration and violence, and to consider the changes that were wrought on communities by raiding groups whose very presence within the landscape brought with it the potential to destabilize and shatter established ways of life. The role of slaving in precipitating these changes deserves much greater consideration than it has been accorded thus far, and the author would welcome further studies that seek to better understand how this practice influenced wider processes of conflict, settlement, and cultural transformation as these played out across land- and seascapes of predation.

Acknowledgements

This article derives from a paper presented (in absentia) at the Viking Winter Camps – Organisation and Movement workshop, which was hosted by the Viking Phenomenon project and held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 2018. I am grateful to Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, John Ljungkvist, Neil Price, Irene García Losquiño, Christian Cooijmans, and Tenaya Jorgensen for their encouragement and helpful comments. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and the editor, whose comments have greatly strengthened the text. All remaining errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The writing of this article was supported by a grant awarded by the Swedish Research Council to the Viking Phenomenon project (2015-00466).

Notes on contributors

Ben Raffield

Ben Raffield is an associate professor in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University. He specializes in the study of the Viking Age with a particular focus on social and military organisation; slavery and social inequality; and cross-cultural interaction.

Notes

1. On slavery in Scandinavia see in particular Nevéus, Trälarna; Karras, Slavery and Society; Iversen, Trelldommen; Brink, Thraldom.

2. For previous studies see Fontaine, “Early Medieval Slave-Trading”; Fontaine, “The Archaeology of Slave Trading,” 56–59; Raffield, “The Slave Markets.”

3. Though see now Etchingham, “Slavery or Ransom?”; also discussions in Biermann and Jankowiak, The Archaeology of Slavery. On slave-trafficking see Holm, “The Slave Trade”; Rio, Slavery After Rome; Fontaine, “Early Medieval Slave-Trading”; Fontaine, “The Archaeology of Slave Trading”; Raffield, “The Slave Markets.”

4. For general discussion see e.g. McLeod, The Beginning of Scandinavian Settlement; Raffield, “Bands of Brothers”; Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs; Hadley and Richards, The Viking Great Army.

5. See Williams, “Towns and Identities,” 18–19; Raffield, “Bands of Brothers,” 322.

6. Raffield, “Bands of Brothers.”

7. Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 1.

8. For a discussion of the terminology used to describe these sites see Cooijmans, ”Down by the River,” 188–91.

9. After Cameron, Captives, 9.

10. See e.g. Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 249; Cameron, “Slavery and Freedom,” 211.

11. See Downham, “The Historical Importance,” 75–76; Downham, “The Earliest Viking Activity,” 9–10.

12. Note that the association of the historically unrecorded site at Aldwark is less certain.

13. See e.g. Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Repton and the Vikings”; Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Repton and the ’Great Heathen Army’”; Clinton, “The Viking Longphort”; Russell and Hurley, Woodstown; Hadley and Richards, “The Winter Camp”; Williams, “Towns and Identities”; Williams, A Riverine Site.

14. See Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, 151; Marcigny, “« Hague Dike »,” 197–98; Soulat, “Le port de Taillebourg”; Dumont et al., “Méthodes d’étude.”

15. On Continental sites and possible archaeological sites, see Price, The Vikings in Brittany, 28–35; Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, 147–51.

16. Harrison, “Discussion of the Viking Burial”; Simpson, “Viking Warrior Burials”; Simpson, “The First Phase”; Wallace, Viking Dublin, 123–53.

17. See Richards, “Excavations at the Viking Barrow Cemetery”; Mcleod, “Warriors and Women”; Raffield, “Bands of Brothers.”

18. See e.g. Clinton, “The Viking Longphort”; Hadley and Richards, “The Winter Camp”; Williams, A Riverine Site.

19. Simpson, “The First Phase,” 426; Clinton, “The Viking Longphort,” 129; Hadley and Richards, “The Winter Camp,” 45–59; Williams, A Riverine Site; Hurley, “Discussion and Conclusions.”

20. Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle, “Repton and the Vikings,” 40–44; Harrison, “Discussion of the Viking Burial”; Simpson, “Viking Warrior Burials,” 56–59; Hadley and Richards, “The Winter Camp,” 39, 43, 46; Holm, “The Slave Trade,” 391–92; Raffield, “Bands of Brothers,” 332–35; Graham-Campbell and Sheehan, “Viking Age Gold”; Downham, “Viking Camps”; Williams, “The Coins.”

21. Clinton, “The Viking Longphort,” 131.

22. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, 501.

23. Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 183; Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 97.

24. Clinton, “The Viking Longphort,” 128–29; Hadley and Richards, The Viking Great Army, 200.

25. See McLeod, “Feeding the Micel Here”; also Simpson, “The First Phase of Viking Activity.”

26. See Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 185; Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 92.

27. Simpson, “The First Phase of Viking Activity,” 426.

28. Ibid; Clinton, “The Viking Longphort”; Hadley and Richards, “The Winter Camp”; Williams, “The Coins.”

29. Cropper, “Glass”; Harvey, “Amber”; Young, “Discussion of Metalworking”; Williams, “Viking Camps.”

30. Bately, “Text and Translation,” 46.

31. Valante, “Dublin’s Economic Relations”; Downham, “Viking Camps in Ninth-Century Ireland.”

32. See e.g. Middleton, “Early Medieval Port Customs”; Rio, Slavery After Rome; Fontaine, “Early Medieval Slave-Trading”; Raffield, “The Slave Markets.”

33. Whitelock, English Historical Documents, 779.

34. Raffield, “The Slave Markets,” 686–87.

35. For Seville see ibn Ḥayyān’s Kitāb al-Muqtabis, an eleventh-century history of Al-Andalus that draws on earlier ninth- and tenth-century sources; Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān, 108. For Continental attacks see Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 30, 53, 55. On Ireland see Mac Airt, and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster, 277, 289, 295. For further discussion see Holm, “The Slave Trade,” 318–23; Etchingham, “Slavery or Ransom?,” 131–34.

36. Somerville, “The Life of Saint Findan,” 196.

37. Christys, Vikings in the South, 54.

38. Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, 139; Pertz, Fragmentum Chronici Fontanellensis, 301–4; Hennessey and Mac Niocaill, Chronicon Scotorum, [WWW] https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T100016/index.html (accessed 14 June 2021).

39. Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, 141.

40. MacLean, History and Politics, 212.

41. See Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān, 108; Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster, 227; Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 37.

42. Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 72.

43. This distinction has been noted in previous studies not only of Viking slaving activity, but also captive-taking and trafficking during the later Middle Ages. See e.g. Raffield, “The Slave Markets,” 687; Blili, “Course et Captivité.”

44. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster, 287–89, 291, 303; O’Donovan, The Annals of the Four Masters, [WWW] https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T100005A/index.html (accessed 14 June 2021).

45. Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, 98.

46. Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 92.

47. See Holder-Egger, Ex Adrevaldi Floriacensis, 494; Coupland, “The Vikings in Francia,” 196; Daas, Viking Attacks on Paris, 87.

48. Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān, 105–9.

49. Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, 140.

50. Ibid; also Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 92.

51. See e.g. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster, 303; Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, 98. For further references see Etchingham, “Slavery or Ransom?,” n. 24.

52. Holm, “The Slave Trade,” 329–30.

53. Rio, Slavery After Rome, 21.

54. Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 86.

55. The number of captives may be exaggerated. Williams, Annales Cambriæ, 21.

56. Pires, “Money for Freedom,” 129.

57. Note for example the payment of wine as part of a tribute made to the Seine Vikings in 866; see Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 130.

58. A comparative link can be drawn here with the account of a Rūs raid on Bardha’a in Azerbaijan, in 943, which describes the Rūs as stripping the town’s inhabitants of both their wealth and other possessions, including clothing and bedding. See Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān, 149.

59. See e.g. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster, 289; also Etchingham, “Slavery or Ransom?,” 123–24.

60. Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, 141–42.

61. Holm, “The Slave Trade of Dublin,” 328; Downham, “The Historical Importance,” 86.

62. Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 97.

63. Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 130.

64. See e.g. Raffield, “The Slave Markets,” 697; Hadley and Richards, The Viking Great Army, 108.

65. O’Brien, “Perforated Lead”; Hadley and Richards, “The Winter Camp,” 54; Walton-Rogers, “Textile Production.”

66. See e.g. Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors; also Gillingham, “Women, Children and the Profits of War.”

67. Finnur Jónsson, Den Norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning, B I, 22–5.

68. Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, 173–242; Raffield, “Bands of Brothers.”

69. Albrectsen, Flodoards Annaler, 17; Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 42.

70. Somerville, “The Life of Saint Findan,” 197.

71. Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 93; Dutton, Carolingian Civilization, 478.

72. Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, 140.

73. For discussion see Etchingham, “Slavery or Ransom?,” 132–33.

74. Fontaine, “Early Medieval Slave-Trading”; Fontaine, “The Archaeology of Slave Trading”; Raffield, “Bands of Brothers,” 321–22; Raffield, “The Slave Markets”; Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, 145.

75. See Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, fig. V.3.

76. Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 185; Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 92.

77. See e.g. Middleton, “Early Medieval Port Customs”; also Rio, Slavery After Rome.

78. Graham-Campbell and Sheehan, “Viking Age Gold”; Fontaine, “Early Medieval Slave-Trading.”

79. See e.g. Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin, 95; Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster, 319.

80. Somerville, “The Life of Saint Findan,” 196; Pires, “Money for Freedom,” 126–28.

81. Pires, “Money for Freedom,” 128

82. Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, 98.

83. Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, 42.

84. Cameron, “Introduction,” 1.

85. See Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs, 159–61; Le Maho, “Les Premières Installations”; Richards and Haldenby, “The Scale and Impact of Viking Settlement.”

86. Coupland, “The Carolingian Army”; Baker and Brookes, Beyond the Burghal Hidage.

87. See e.g. Kershaw, Viking Identities.

88. See Hodges, “The Evolution of Gateway Communities.”

89. For previous discussions of the ways in which archaeological evidence for captivity and slaving might emerge in such contexts, see Fontaine, “The Archaeology of Slave Trading,” 55–59; Raffield, Gardeła and Toplak, “Slavery in Viking Age Scandinavia,” 33–28.

90. See e.g. Tys, Deckers and Wouters, “Circular, D-Shaped and Other Fortifications”; Tys and Wouters, “Antwerp (Belgium)”; Cooijmans, “Viking Dorestad”; Adamczyk, “Did the Viking Age Begin”; Jagodziński and Kasprzycka, “The Early Medieval Craft and Commercial Centre”; Wietrzichowski, “Untersuchungen zu dem Anfang.”

91. See e.g. Cameron, Captives; Winnebeck et al., On Asymmetrical Dependency.