with the sense of town or market, and that therefore the Vikings might have been distinguished by the fact that they frequented these trading places—for both raiding and trading. Although the people who stayed at home in Scandinavia techni- cally were not Vikings in the true sense of the word, it is often hard to distinguish the two groups of population clearly, as in the summer, people who had lived peacefully at home all winter may have turned to Viking activities. The term Viking was in actual fact hardly used by the contempo- raries of the Vikings. They used instead a wide range of other terms: in the Christian West they were often called “heathen,” and in the Muslim regions, such as Spain, they were called majus. Most com- mon, however, were the geographical terms “Northmen” and “Danes” that were usually used irrespective of which part of Scandi- navia from which they came. VINLAND (ON Vinland). Region, also known as Vinland the Good, explored by Norse Greenlanders that is mentioned in a number of written sources, the most important of which are the Icelandic sagas, the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red. In these sagas, Vinland is described as having a plentiful supply of salmon; a mild climate so that livestock could graze all year round; days and nights of a more even length than in Iceland or Greenland; and a good supply of timber and wild grapes. The geographical descriptions contained in these sagas make it clear that Vinland was located somewhere in North America, but there has been considerable scholarly debate about the exact location of the region. One of the earliest suggestions was made by C. C. Rafn in 1837, when he equated Vinland with Cape Cod, but New England, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the St. Lawrence River valley have since also been put forward as possible locations for Vinland. However, following the archaeological discoveries at L’Anse aux Meadows in the 1960s, most scholars believed that Newfoundland was the Vinland of the sagas, although the absence of wild grapes in the region has caused a number of problems in identifying the exca- vated site with the descriptions of the sagas. More recent accounts have stressed the connection between L’Anse aux Meadows and the specific settlements or camps mentioned in the sagas, Leifsbu ðir and 278 • VINLAND Straumfjörd, which were used as bases for exploration south. In this view, Vinland itself would be located to the south of Newfoundland, where grapes grew in the wild, perhaps in New Brunswick, the Bay of Fundy, or the St. Lawrence River valley. VINLAND MAP. Yale University Press published The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation by Raleigh A. Skelton, Thomas E. Marston, and George D. Painter on 11 October 1965 (the day before Columbus Day). It was found by an American bookseller, Lawrence Witten, of New Haven, and was purchased in 1957 by a man called Mellon. However, Witten had sworn not to reveal details of the map’s previ- ous ownership, so nothing else is known of its provenance. The map is a crude depiction of the world, drawn on antique vellum and dated by its authors to c. 1440 because of its discovery with an authentic and unrelated medieval text, the Tartar Relation. In the top left-hand cor- ner of the map (in the northwest) was what appeared to be the first known depiction of Vinland, labeled Winilanda (or Vinilanda) Insula. A Latin inscription above this mentions Byarnus (Bjarni Herjólfs- son) and Leiphus (Leif Eriksson) together explored Winilanda, and that Henricus . . . epsicopus (Bishop Eiríkr Gnúpsson?) went in search of Vinland in the early 12th century. Norse voyages to Vinland are recorded in the Icelandic sagas, the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders, and on the basis of the geographical descriptions in these sagas, Vinland had been identified as lying somewhere in North America. However, be- fore the discovery of archaeological evidence for a Scandinavian presence in North America, many historians questioned the reliabil- ity of the sagas’ evidence, as they were first and foremost literary rather than historical texts. The Vinland Map therefore seemed to substantiate saga evidence for pre-Columbian Europeans visiting the North American continent. However, doubts concerning the authenticity of the map were raised from the time of its publication. Its view of the world was out- side the mainstream of cartographic evolution, where the ocean is normally depicted as encircling the inhabited world on medieval maps, but this is not the case on the Vinland Map; unlike other me- dieval maps, the map is not oriented to the east; the depiction of Greenland was unparalleled in its accuracy before the 20th century; VINLAND MAP • 279 and, of course, the map shows Greenland and part of North America, which otherwise do not appear on extant maps until the beginning of the 16th century, when they are depicted by Genovese cartographer, Nicolo Canerio (his map is dated to 1503–1505). Following scientific tests by Walter McCrone, the Vinland Map was dismissed as a for- gery in 1974, as the ink with which it was drawn contained commer- cial titanium oxide, anatase, which was apparently unknown before 1917. However, later testing by Thomas A. Cahill, published in 1987, suggested that only trace elements of the chemical could be found, and that the map could therefore not be dismissed as a fake on the grounds of its ink. However, others contest this, and analysis of the specific ink used to draw the map is ongoing; it appears that it may be a common varnish-based printer’s ink that needs to be heated to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit in order to remain stable on the page. The results of a fresh examination of the ink were published in 2002, and the scientists from University College London concluded that they were modern. However, the parchment on which the map is drawn is likely to be from the 15th century. Despite careful preserva- tion, the ink pigment on the Vinland Map has been rapidly falling off since its discovery, so that no black lines can be seen today, just the stain of linseed that soaked into the vellum; such a rate of loss further suggests that the map is unlikely to have been medieval in date. Fi- nally, the supposedly medieval date of the map partly rested on its discovery with the 15th-century Tartar Relation, but the binding with which the two were placed together is 18th-century in date. Ironically, the map provides no real evidence to help scholars lo- cate Vinland: it does not show Markland and Helluland, which the sagas say were visited by Scandinavians on their way south to Vin- land, and scholars who argue for Hudson Bay, New England, or New- foundland as the location of Vinland can all find some support in the map for their claims. Yet, at the time of the map’s publication, clear archaeological evidence for Scandinavian settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows had just been discovered. VINLAND SAGAS. Name given to the two Icelandic sagas that re- count Norse voyages to Vinland. There are many similarities be- tween the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders but a number of differences too. The key difference between the two 280 • VINLAND SAGAS sagas is the role of Leif the Lucky Eriksson, son of Erik the Red. In the Saga of Erik the Red, Leif made the first accidental discovery of Vinland in 1000, whereas in the Saga of the Greenlanders, it was sighted by Bjarni Herjólfsson some 15 years earlier. The account in the Saga of Erik the Red also links Leif’s discovery with the conver- sion of Greenland to Christianity, claiming that Leif was persuaded in Norway by Olaf Tryggvason to convert his countrymen. How- ever, while sailing from Norway to Greenland, Leif was blown off course and thus discovered Vinland, before heading back to Green- land and then successfully converting the Norse colony to Christian- ity, and rescuing two shipwrecked sailors on the way. Although the more polished Saga of Erik the Red was preferred by many 19th-century scholars, research published in the 1950s demon- strated that the story about Leif meeting Olaf Tryggvason and con- verting Greeland was the invention of an Icelandic monk, Gunnlaug Leifsson, in the late 12th century, when the traditional number of countries that Olaf is said to have converted, five (Norway, Iceland, Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe Islands), suddenly became six. Gunnlaug added Greenland to the list, and this new “tradition” was subsequently repeated in many 13th-century works. The Saga of Erik the Red was therefore seen as a deliberate revision of the older Saga of the Greenlanders, focusing on the role played by Erik’s family. The writer of the Saga of Erik the Red had to try to reconcile all the evidence he had: on the one hand, the Saga of the Greenlanders recorded that Vinland was first accidentally sighted by Bjarni, but on the other, there was the later tradition that it was Leif who had dis- covered Vinland first. The result was that he discarded the Bjarni episode and was therefore also forced to discard the story about Leif’s deliberate voyage to explore Vinland, which is given in the Saga of the Greenlanders. However, the details of this voyage were used but fitted into different places in the narrative in the Saga of Erik the Red. More recently, some scholars have argued against a written link between the two Vinland sagas, concluding instead that they both independently drew upon details of the Vinland voyages that were circulating in oral tradition. VÖLSUNGA SAGA (“The Saga of the Volsungs”). This saga is per- haps the most famous of the Sagas of Ancient Times and was the VÖLSUNGA SAGA • 281 inspiration for German composer Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Ring des Nibelungen. It was written in Iceland c. 1260–1270 and is preserved in just one vellum manuscript dating from c. 1400 but is believed to incorporate relics of a much older oral tradition. In- deed, some of the figures in the saga can be identified with known historical figures from the Migration Age (c. 400–550). For exam- ple, Jörmunrekkr in the saga appears to be the fourth-century king of the Goths, Ermanaric; and Atli, the fifth-century king of the Huns, Attila. However, the central figure in the saga is Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, whose acquisition of a cursed treasure of gold leads to his death and a bitter and bloody series of feuds. Following Sig- urd’s own death, the cursed treasure passed into the possession of his brothers-in-law, Gunnar and Hogni. Their sister, Gudrun, remarried, taking Atli, brother of the valkyrie Brynhild, as her husband. Atli coveted the gold Gudrun’s brothers owned and tricked and killed them both (Gunnar was put to death in a snake pit). Gudrun re- venged the deaths of her brothers by tricking Atli into drinking the blood and eating the hearts of his sons, before killing him with the help of Hogni’s son, Niflung. However, the curse of the gold fol- lowed Gudrun, whose daughter (by Sigurd), Svanhild, was trampled to death by horses at the instigation of her (Svanhild’s) father-in-law. VÖLUSPÁ (“The Prophecy of the Seeress”). The first and most fa- mous of the mythological poems in the collection known as the El- der or Poetic Edda. The poem is preserved in two main manuscripts, the Codex Regius and Hauksbók, the texts and ordering of which are quite different; most modern editions follow the former, adding some four stanzas (34, 54, 65, and parts of 47 and 60) from Hauksbók, which gives the poem a total of 66 stanzas. Although the Codex Regius manuscript is dated to c. 1270, the poem itself is believed to be considerably older and may predate 1065, when the skald (see skaldic poetry) Arnórr þ órðarson jarlaskáld echoes stanza 57 of Völuspá in his þ orfinnsdrápa. A date as early as the beginning of the 10th century has been suggested, but it is also argued that the poem may reflect millennial anxieties surrounding the year 1000, when it was believed that the world would come to an end. Völuspá is pre- sented as a series of visions recounted by a seeress or sybil to Odin and it provides an account of the beginning and end of the Norse 282 • VÖLUSPÁ mythological world. Snorri Sturluson used this poem for his own account of Norse mythology and cosmology in the Prose Edda. The extent to which the poem reflects Christian influence has been much debated, with particular attention paid to the poem’s account of the end of the world, the reference to the coming of “The Mighty One,” and the idea of punishment or reward after death. – W – WALES, VIKINGS IN (ON Bretland). It appears that Wales escaped serious Viking raiding until the mid-ninth century. Its coastline, with treacherous currents and difficult approaches, certainly made it diffi- cult for hostile forces to attack. However, following the establish- ment of permanent Viking settlements in Ireland and the Hebrides, Scandinavian raiders made some attempt to gain a foothold in Wales. Particularly attractive was the island of Anglesey off the northwest- ern coast of Wales. However, Rhodri Mawr, prince of the northern Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd, (844–878) managed to resist Scandina- vian attempts to establish settlements on Anglesey and killed the Viking leader, Gorm, in an important campaign in 855. Excavations at Llanbedrgoch on Anglesey since the 1990s have revealed a huge defended enclosure that may have been constructed during Rhodri’s reign or that of his son’s in response to Viking pressure. However, the artifacts found at Llanbedrgoch also suggest that there was trading contact with Scandinavians active in the Irish Sea region, and it may even be possible that the settlement was taken over by Vikings at some point. During the last years of Rhodri’s reign, he was forced into exile in Ireland following a series of Danish victories; and in 878, the Vikings first overwintered in Wales, in the southwestern dis- trict of Pembrokeshire. The expulsion of the Dublin Norse in 902 renewed Scandinavian interest in Wales and, in particular, Anglesey. However, In- gimundr’s army was driven from the island and was eventually given land around Chester by Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. The restoration of Scandinavian power in Ireland in 914 was followed by a further attack on Anglesey, which was repelled by Hywel Dda (c. 915–950), grandson of Rhodri Mawr. South Wales suffered WALES, VIKINGS IN • 283 rather more during this period. Pembrokeshire offered a relatively easy line of entry into the country through Milford Haven; there were sporadic raids and there may have been some limited settle- ment along the Haven. In 914, two Viking earls from Brittany, Ohter and Hroald, ravaged the Welsh coast and moved inland along the Wye Valley as far as Archenfield. Here they captured the bishop of Llandaff, Bishop Cyfeiliog, who was ransomed for £40 by Ed- ward the Elder of England. There was a lull in Scandinavian activity in Wales during the sec- ond quarter of the 10th century during Hywel’s reign, and by 942, Hywel was ruler of virtually the whole country. However, this inter- lude was followed by a dramatic new development in Welsh relations with the Vikings. Until this time, Wales was the only kingdom in the British Isles that had been able to avoid intense raiding and conced- ing tracts of land to the Scandinavians. But Hywel Dda’s death in 950 ignited a disastrous period of internal conflict in Wales, and this was taken advantage of by the Vikings. Some Welsh princes used Scandi- navian mercenaries in their own campaigns for political dominance within Wales. For example, Maredudd ap Owain (986–999), ruler of the south Welsh kingdom of Dyfed, used Viking mercenaries but was later forced by them to pay a penny a head for Welsh prisoners that they had taken. Some 14 or 15 raids are recorded in the 50 years that followed the death of Hywel Dda: on Dyfed, Anglesey, and the Lleyn Peninsula, and in the Bristol Channel area. Monasteries were obvious and vulnerable targets, for example, St. David’s was attacked in 982, 988, and 999; and the kingdom of Gwynedd suffered from its prox- imity to Viking bases in Ireland and the Isle of Man, with attacks recorded on Holyhead (961) and Towyn (963). However, again, An- glesey appears to have suffered most. In 971, Magnus Haraldsson, leader of the Manx Vikings, attacked Penmon, and further attacks by Magnus’s brother, Godfrey, are recorded in 972, 980, and 987. In 972, Godfrey was apparently the temporary lord of Anglesey. The fe- rocious attack in 987 was recorded in Irish and Welsh annals, where some thousand Welshmen are said to have been killed and a further two thousand taken captive. By around the year 1000, Viking activity across the border from Eng- land increased with intensified campaigning there. Pressure from the east became the dominant issue in Welsh politics, a trend that was in- 284 • WALES, VIKINGS IN tensified after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. However, Gruffydd ap Llewelyn (1039–1063) largely resisted these incursions successfully, until defeated by Harald Godwinsson in 1063. Gruffydd was actually assisted by a Norwegian fleet, under Magnus Haraldsson, son of Harald Hard-Ruler in 1058. By this time, distinctions between Celt and Norseman were becoming blurred, and it is possible to talk of an Irish-Sea political circle. For example, Gruffydd ap Cynan, ruler of Gwynedd from 1075, was said to have been born in exile in Ireland in 1054 or 1055 and to have been brought up in the Scandinavian settle- ment there. After 1066, the new Norman earls of Hereford, Chester, and Shrewsbury supported Norman expansion into the west. Hugh Lupus of Chester, with Hugh Montgomery of Shrewsbury, made a decisive attempt to win control of north Wales in 1098. The native Welsh princes were forced to withdraw to Anglesey and employed Hiberno- Norse mercenaries to help control the seas. The mercenaries betrayed their Welsh lords, and Gruffydd ap Cynan was forced to flee to Ire- land. It was at this point that the last real Viking intervention in Welsh affairs came, with the appearance of King Magnus Bare-Foot and a Norwegian fleet off the island of Priestholm. After a confrontation in the Menai Straits and a Norwegian victory, both the Norwegians and the Normans withdrew from Wales. The impact of the Vikings on Wales was relatively slight when compared to other parts of the British Isles. There was virtually no Scandinavian influence on the Welsh language: iarll “earl” and gardd “enclosure” may be examples of Scandinavian loanwords, but it is also possible that they were loaned via English. There is no explicit mention of Scandinavian settlement in Wales in any sources, apart from the very problematic 12th-century legendary Saga of the Jomsvikings (see Jomsvikings), which mentions a Danish colony that was established in Bretland before c. 930 and which existed throughout the 10th century. There are several examples of Scandi- navian place-names, but these are generally navigation points and the names of small islands around the Welsh coast, such as Bardsey, Holyhead, the Skerries, Priestholm and Orme’s Head in the north, and Ramsey, Grassholm, and Skokholm in the south. Anglesey itself, which is consistently called Mon in Welsh, seems to be a Scandina- vian name meaning “Ongull’s island,” although no Viking leader WALES, VIKINGS IN • 285 called Ongull can be identified in any of the written sources. Names inland around Milford (itself derived from ON -fjör ð r) do, however, hint at some kind of Scandinavian settlement in the interior of Wales. Swansea is undoubtedly Scandinavian “Svein’s island,” but there are also many names, such as Womanby Street in Cardiff (from Hund- manby), that may reflect later Anglo-Scandinavian influence rather than Scandinavian influence. WANTAGE CODE. See DANELAW, WAPENTAKE. WAPENTAKE (ON vápnatak OE wæpentac “weapon-taking”). A lo- cal administrative and legal division found in parts of Danelaw, which largely corresponds with the English hundred (a hundred notionally consisted of 100 hides, a hide being the amount of land needed to sup- port one family and the basic unit of taxation in England). In 1086, Domesday Book records wapentakes in the territory of the Five Bor- oughs, parts of Northamptonshire, and in the West and North Ridings of Yorkshire (East Yorkshire, however, is divided into hundreds). The word is first found in English sources in 962, in the laws of King Edgar (959–975), concerning the buying and selling of goods “in a borough or a wapentake.” Wapentake assemblies were held regularly, usually in the open air, and they appear to have been the most important legal and judicial unit in the administration of the Five Boroughs in Æthelred II’s Wantage Code. In Iceland, the vápnatak was a ceremony per- formed at the end of the Althing, in which weapons were beaten to confirm the decisions of the assembly. Weapons were outlawed at the Althing in 1154, but it seems that this law was largely ignored. There is no Scandinavian evidence for the use of the term “wapentake” to de- scribe an administrative district. WAR OF THE IRISH WITH THE FOREIGNERS (Irish Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh). Twelfth-century Irish rhetorical account of Norse-Irish relations, written as a piece of propaganda for the Uí Bri- ain dynasty descended from Brian Boru. Divided into two sections, the work begins with a colorful description of Viking raids and plun- dering that afflicted Ireland during the eighth and ninth centuries, and then goes on to describe in heroic terms the defeat of the Vikings at the hands of the Uí Briain kings of Dál Cais, paying particular at- 286 • WANTAGE CODE tention to Brian and his brother, Mathgamain. The War of the Irish with the Foreigners culminates with a vivid description of the Battle of Clontarf, in which the “foreigners” are depicted as, among a long series of pejorative adjectives, “cunning, warlike, poisonous, mur- derous, hostile,” while the Irish under Brian are “bright, fresh, never- weary, valiant, victorious heroes.” Despite the clearly propagandist nature of the work, it has had considerable influence on perceptions of the importance of the Battle of Clontarf. WATLING STREET. Name of the Roman road that ran from London in the southeast to Chester in northwest England. During the Viking period, Watling Street appears to have functioned as a boundary be- tween the area of Scandinavian settlement and the area that remained under English control. Watling Street was mentioned in Alfred the Great and Guthrum’s treaty at Wedmore, although the treaty itself does not actually specify that the boundary ran along the whole length of Watling Street to Chester. Instead, it merely states that the dividing line between Alfred’s and Guthrum’s territories should first follow the River Thames, then the River Lea to its source, then run in a direct line to Bedford, and then up the River Ouse to Watling Street. It is not until later on, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1013, that we have some contemporary evidence that Watling Street had come to be generally recognized as the dividing line between Anglo- Scandinavian and English England. The distribution of Scandinavian place-names also largely follows this dividing line. WEAPONS AND ARMOR. Viking warriors were generally armed with a shield, spear, a sword or an ax, and a short knife attached to their belts. The warrior shown on the Middleton cross is equipped with all of these weapons and is also wearing a helmet. Very few hel- mets have survived from the Viking Age, although depictions of war- riors in Viking art suggest that conical helmets were common. The horned and winged helmets associated with the Vikings in popular mythology were the invention of 19th-century Romanticism. It has been suggested that Viking helmets may have been made from leather, as well as from iron. The best-preserved Viking helmet is that from Gjermundbu in Norway, which is more elaborate than the sim- ple conical design, with protection around the eyes and for the nose. WEAPONS AND ARMOR • 287 . voyages to Vinland are recorded in the Icelandic sagas, the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders, and on the basis of the geographical descriptions in these sagas, Vinland had been. in a number of written sources, the most important of which are the Icelandic sagas, the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red. In these sagas, Vinland is described as having a. century. There are several examples of Scandi- navian place-names, but these are generally navigation points and the names of small islands around the Welsh coast, such as Bardsey, Holyhead, the Skerries,