Hraundal gives lecture on Eastern Vikings in Arabic Sources
Scandinavian people increasingly mobilized to seek new pastures abroad
By Cinatra Fernandes
KUWAIT CITY, May 23: Thorir Jonsson Hraundal gave a lecture on Eastern Vikings in Arabic Sources at the Yarmouk Cultural Centre on Monday evening highlighting the material evidence and written sources that provide a glimpse into an interesting period of history.
Thorir Jonsson Hraundal is a lecturer in Medieval Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iceland. After graduating in general linguistics from the same university, he studied Arabic and Hebrew semiotics at the University of Salamanca before obtaining an M.Litt from the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge, where he examined the northwards expansion of Islam, specifically the conversion of the Volga Bulghars. His doctorate from the University of Bergen focused on accounts written mainly by ninth-and tenth century Muslim geographers and historians on peoples they termed ar-Rus.
He began his lecture by stating that around the year 750, two remarkable movements took place at the opposite end of the western Eurasian land mass. This was a time of great change in the Middle East; after the achievement of the Umayyad caliphate in terms of the conquest and spread of the Arabic language and Islam, the Abbasids were now taking over and ushering in a glorious period in the history of Islam and the whole region as well. The Caliphate now extended from India in the east to North Africa and
Hraundal gives a lecture at the Yarmouk Cultural Centre.
the Iberian peninsula in the west.
In the north, however, Scandinavian peoples were increasingly mobilized to seek new pastures abroad. Multiple factors were at play that included shortage of land, opportunities for fame and fortune abroad. The Norse people thrust onward and outward with the greatest navigation skills and technology available at the time.
Both were relentless in their advances strategically and militarily. The Muslims earned victories against the Byzantine empire at Yarmouk and Persians, and also advanced culturally with the Abbasids, while the northerners perfected the art of sailing in both shallow rivers and the big seas, and became unstoppable. When the Viking age petered out in the 11th century, they had left signs of their presence in an area reaching from the Eastern coast of North America to the Caspian sea, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic in the north.
Hraundal pointed out that these influential social mobilizes of the middle ages, considering the geographical scope of their activities, were bound to collide at some point. “We are in luck that the history of these encounters incidentally are preserved in contemporary Arabic writings,” he said.
He informed that the archaeological remains from the 8th century shows a consistent pattern of expansion from the Scandinavian peninsula to the Baltic and to Russia today. Various type of evidence shows the Scandinavian Viking presence in the east. He shared that a silver dirham from the Umayyad caliphate provides an answer to the question of the Viking presence in the east. “The dirhams have a lot of information in them as well and they can be useful as units and in hordes for dating. The amount of these coins is staggering, found in hordes. We see that there is a trail coming from the east and the greatest concentration is in the island of Gotland, here we have hordes with thousands of dirhams”, he informed. Approximately 350,000 of silver were transported in this way to North Europe and Scandinavia.
Interaction
Among other sources, he presented written indications of the Viking interaction, as well as certain Scandinavian names that serve as strong indications of the interactions. However, there is a lack of references in Scandinavian writings when compared to Arabic sources at this time can which can be attributed to the fact that old Scandinavian writing is quite late, a 13th century occurrence at the earliest. “The combination of these sources is much less informative than the Arabic material”, he noted.
Turning to the Arabic sources, he revealed that there are over 50 different works in Arabic from the middle ages that mention Vikings and Norsemen in some sense and highlighted the main contemporary strands of information that Arabic and Islamic geographers have on the Vikings. Most sources form part of the Arabic geographical tradition with the ascent of the Abbasid learning, scholarship and culture in general to great leaps forward. The expansion of Islam and the necessity to chart territories, as well as contacts with Byzantium helped bring about the cultural revolution in the 8th century, often called the translation movement where huge quantities of classical texts preserved in Constantinople were translated into Arabic. Some of these were geographies. He informed that this carried into the 9th and 10th centuries and discussed a number of these in detail.
Shortly after the mid 10th century, perhaps on account of less silver and mines being depleted, there is no new information of the Vikings. He shared that another possibility is that they integrated with the people but by 11th century they seem to disappear. Material evidence found in Scandinavia, apart from coinage, includes vessels with Arabic inscriptions found on the coast of Sweden, as well as sensors, rings, and other Islamic items.
Hraundal affirmed that this is a fraction of the enormous legacy of this period and these contacts. He stressed that the manifold sources allow us to glimpse a very interesting part of history, a period where Europeans and Muslims traded and enjoyed diplomatic contacts and the state of affairs before the crusades. He shared that while this material has received little attention from scholars, he hopes that it will become an obvious evident part of all discussions on not only Scandinavian history but also of the Middle East.