In September of 844, 229 or 230 in the Islamic calendar, the horizon from Lisbon was filled with dark red sails that blackened the horizon, and “filled the hearts of men with fear.” These were the Vikings, who had just made their first major assault on Iberia in Asturias. These Vikings would terrorize the coasts of Asturias and al-Andalus for one to two months, and conduct further expeditions a little more than a decade later, and in the 10th and 11th centuries. But where did they come from, what exactly did their operations in Iberia look like, and what was their impact on the peninsula? The number of written sources about the Vikings in Iberia is disproportionate to their impact on the peninsula. This is the result of two factors: first, the Vikings made a great propaganda tool. The story of a valiant ruler leading the charge against this infamous group of alien marauders from the north was an image that would resonate with people, and echo through the ages, and the image of the evil pagan armies sent to die at the sword by God was a useful message for church reform. But this factor would not be so powerful if it weren’t for the second: the Viking strategy of warfare was terrifying. The Vikings were not any more or less brutal or merciless in battle than other groups, but their way of waging war struck fear in the hearts of those who witnessed them, and left a lasting imprint on the places they attacked. The sudden appearance of dark sails on the horizon, their sleek ships, their reckless way of fighting, their preference for hand to hand combat, all contributed to the image of a terrifying, chaotic alien force that appeared out of nowhere to wreak havoc.

In 844, Seville was under the territories of the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba, led at the time by Adb al-Rahman II. The Umayyads, who had achieved supremacy in the Muslim world in 661, had swept through Iberia starting in 711, conquering all except a lone Christian kingdom in the northwest called Asturias. The Umayyads in turn were conquered by the Abbasid revolution. However, an Umayyad prince known as Abd al-Rahman survived and established a dynasty in Cordoba, taking the title of Emir. Centered at the city of Cordoba, the Emirate was a thriving hub of knowledge in its time that would rival even Baghdad. Abd al-Rahman II, Abd al-Rahman I’s grandson, reigned from 822 until 852, and during that time trade with the East flourished, and its intellectual culture flourished along with it due to Abd al-Rahman II’s generous patronage of scholarship. It is in part because of this that the Arabic sources on the Viking invasions are so numerous, and so detailed. The relationship between the Emirate of Cordoba and Asturias was tense during the Viking Age, as they fought for control of the borderlands. The Vikings became an unwitting part of the battle of words between the two regions, as they were a ripe event to form propaganda around for both Latin and Arabic sources.

It is also necessary to place the Vikings in context. Too often, likely because of the biases of the primary source material and subsequent mythologization in popular culture, Vikings are depicted as showing up to a random location, committing violence, and disappearing back into the unknown. On the contrary, each Viking raid came from somewhere, and went to somewhere after their raids. They were wrapped up in the power struggles and politics of the place they came from, and they were part of a broader historical trajectory. The causes of the advent of the Viking Age are numerous and controversial, and the full extent of them, historiography and all, are not worth going into in the light of this paper. However, a brief history of the factors and events leading up to the raid on Seville on the Viking side of things is in order, to understand how the Vikings came to be in Iberia and what they were doing there. The Viking Age is characterized by the period of time in which Norsemen participated in large-scale raiding and conquest throughout modern day Europe, and parts of Africa and western Asia. At the advent of the Viking Age, the most important power in Scandinavia was Denmark, which controlled most of the central areas of Scandinavia, “from Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany to Jylland (Jutland) and Sjælland (Zealand), across Skåne (Scania) in Sweden and on to Lindesnes (the Naze) in Agder county, Norway.” These were also the most densely populated areas in Scandinavia. The end of Danish supremacy in the region would in many ways also mark the end of the Viking Age. Denmark did not hold this preeminent position in Scandinavian politics by coincidence. Denmark had to have a strong military and political position because it was under constant pressure from its Slavic and Germanic neighbors to the south. The resulting political centralization, as well as the models from the Carolingian Empire of plunder’s importance in maintaining a loyal military and the potential of piracy in overcoming competition between Scandinavian dynasties, and potentially an overabundance of young men as a result of female infanticide that increased competition for wives, contributed to the beginning of the Viking Age in the 8th century.

In 793, the Vikings attacked a monastery at Lindisfarne, an island off the coast of Northumbria. For many, this attack represents the beginning of the Viking Age in Europe, although this assertion is highly debatable, as there are documented instances of raids prior to Lindisfarne. The date has become a sort of dramatic dawn of an age of Vikings, after which they moved southward over time, but it is clear that the Vikings preceded the raid in 793, and that this conception of history is essentially a myth meant to dramatize the encroachment of Vikings in Europe. It forces Viking movements into a restrictive box that is perhaps easier to follow but that mischaracterizes the nature of the spread of Scandinavian societies.

Ireland had been the object of Norwegian raids since 795, but things changed with the arrival in Ireland of the Norwegian chieftain Turgeis in 837. Turgeis and his fleet quickly took Dublin and used Ireland as a base from which they conducted raids in continental Europe. Vikings had settled the island on Noirmoutier off the coast of Brittany by 824, twenty-five years after their first raid on the island. During this period, the Vikings had a complex relationship with Brittany, which they raided frequently and also allied with against the Frankish Carolingian Empire. They settled over the summer at the island of Noirmoutier at the mouth of the river Loire, from which they attacked the Breton city of Nantes in 843. These were likely Vikings that hailed from the Norwegian Irish court, based on chronicles that describe the Vikings that took Nantes as Westfaldingi (Vestfold—Southern Norwegians), and that they hailed from the Britannic Ocean (Irish Sea). Ibn Dihya’s record of the poet-ambassador al-Ghazal’s diplomatic mission to the Viking court also points to Ireland, as ibn Dihya’s account speaks of the Vikings as Christians, which in 845 was more likely to be the Vikings of Ireland, and his detailed descriptions of the land also point to Ireland. In addition, if al-Ghazal went to the Danish court and achieved a truce, the Danes would be breaking the truce when they attacked in 859. It is more likely that al-Ghazal achieved a peace treaty with the Norwegian Irish Vikings, who did not attack again. 

The northern coast of Iberia was developed in Roman times, and there are records of many Roman port cities along the coast. However, as they were at the fringes of the empire, they had no Roman defense against raiders like the Vandals and Alans, and because of this were forced to move inland, abandoning the port towns. As a result, Vikings would have found a sparsely populated land “with rare farmhouses and ruins from ancient Roman harbours.” The western coast of Iberia is pockmarked by inlets, lagoons, rivers, and streams which provided ideal locations for Viking ships to shelter, and islands they could settle over winter. In addition, Vikings found rivers navigable to distinctly plunderable cities, like the Asturian town of Santiago de Compostela in the north, and Lisbon and Seville in the south. Oviedo would have been on this list were it not for the fact that the Vikings, curiously, ignored it.

Somewhat uniquely, the archaeological evidence for Viking raids in Iberia is almost nil. It is limited to some evidence of defensive building, a few coins and artifacts, and unconfirmed local claims regarding the origin of anchors off the Iberian coast. In addition, there is some evidence that the Vikings brought mice to the island of Madeira during the 10th or early 11th century, which lies outside the scope of this essay. 

Because of this lack of material evidence, written sources must be relied on much more heavily. The earliest source on the Viking raid on Seville in 844 is the Annals of St. Bertin, the relevant period of which was written by Prudentius of Troyes. The Annals were written from a Frankish perspective, and therefore do not give many details about the events on the Iberian peninsula. Instead, they take broad strokes:

“The Northmen sailed up the Garonne as far as Toulouse, wreaking destruction everywhere, without meeting any opposition. Then some of them withdrew from there and attacked Galicia, but they perished, partly because they met resistance from missile-throwers, partly because they were caught in a storm at sea. Some of them, though, got to the south-western part of Spain, where they fought long and bitterly with the Saracens, but were finally beaten and withdrew to their ships.”

It is suggested that Viking raids on the Loire and the Garonne were done in collusion with Count Lambert and his allies against Charles the Bald. This possibility is outside the scope of this essay, but is contextually informative regarding what the Vikings were doing in the region prior to their raids in Iberia. According to the 10th century Chronicle of Nantes, “from there wishing to sail to their region, the North Wind diverted those men who had gathered on account of violence all the way to Galicia.” If true, this passage would indicate that the first expedition of the Vikings to Iberia happened by accident. However, this is unlikely to be true, and the Annals of St. Bertin mentions a “storm at sea” as well, distinctly after the Vikings had already set out to Iberia. The Chronicle of Alfonso III tells that

“The people of the North who were previously unknown to us, a pagan and super duper cruel people, came to us in parts with an army of ships. Ramiro, having by now been made king, gathered a great army for the arrival of the Northmen and in a place which was called Farum Brecantium (Brigantium/A Coruña) he attacked them; and there he killed a great multitude of them and consumed their ships with fire.”

The possibility that the Vikings were set upon by a storm would also lend additional meaning to the above phrasing, that the Vikings “came to us in parts” (in partibus), indicating that after experiencing the storm, they came ashore in A Coruña in a disorganized fashion. However, there is evidence that this was not their first stop in Iberia. The Chronicle of A Sebastian mentions that “there came the Northman fleets from the northern ocean to the city of Gijón, and from there they advanced to a place called Faro de Brigancio.” Although, as mentioned above, the northern coast of Iberia would have been largely abandoned and the land poor, it can be assumed that the Asturian port of Gijón was still populated in the 9th century, and its inlet would have provided an ideal shelter for the Viking fleet, especially if the weather was bad. If they did stop in Gijón, it is likely either that shelter was their only reason, or Gijón was strong enough to repel their attack, as it seems they did not attempt to sail up the river to Oviedo, which, as the king’s seat, would have yielded great bounty from plunder and ransoms. It would be hard to believe that the Vikings sacked Oviedo without some mention in the chronicles, as it would have been an important event in the history of Asturias, and would have been ripe material for Arab chroniclers seeking dirt on Asturias, therefore it almost certainly did not happen.

Although the Chronicle of Alfonso III asserts that Ramiro I gathered a “great army” and routed the Vikings at A Coruña, this should probably not be taken at face value. Ramiro I had just emerged out of a succession crisis with Nepotian (who he blinded and tossed in a monastery), and had an insecure hold on the region, facing multiple revolts alongside popular discontent. To be fair, these revolts were led by Asturian nobles (Counts of the Palace Aldroitus and Piniolus), and Ramiro I’s support in Galicia was more consistent. However, the conditions in Iberia at the time would make quickly and efficiently marshaling troops difficult even in Galicia. Although the Christians would likely have maintained military mobilization to some extent because of their frequent conflict with al-Andalus, it seems unlikely that Ramiro I would be able to annihilate a large Viking fleet with his “great army” at this point. The borderlands between Christian and Muslim Iberia were defined by a zone of relative depopulation (recently, historians have reevaluated the extent of depopulation in the borderlands, and now envision an area of continuous Christian settlements commingled with new Christian and Muslim settlements—still, it was a place of relative depopulation). Frequent raids were conducted through this region by the Muslims and to a lesser extent by Christians, but these were usually organized by local lords, and defended against by guerilla-like contingents on the Christian side. These armies would not have been remotely under Ramiro I’s control. The Annals of St. Bertin makes no reference to Ramiro I in its rendition of events, instead attributing the Asturian victory to anonymous “missile throwers”. It would make sense for the Chronicle of Alfonso III to attribute these successes to the king, who was an ancestor of Alfonso. It is likely, then, that the “missile-throwers” that beat back the Vikings in 844 were simply local forces called to defend A Coruña at the sight of a Viking fleet. One can envision the Vikings arriving in Galicia after the storm, seeking supplies and a place to stay, when they are set upon by the forces of Asturias and sent back to sea. At the sight of a mass of Viking ships, who despite the assertion in the Chronicle of Alfonso III that they were “unknown to us” would have absolutely been infamous to the Galicians, the local landowners likely constructed hasty armies involving “missile throwers”. If I’m wrong, and it was Ramiro I leading the heroic charge after all, it is likely that his army was not as “great” or “efficient” as the chroniclers suggested. The disastrous defeat of the Vikings was probably owed at least in part to the bad weather they had experienced prior to their arrival in A Coruña. In any case, the Vikings were repulsed.

After setting sail from Galicia, the Vikings continued to Lisbon, where they were spotted off the coast with fifty-four large ships and an equal number of auxiliary ships. Wahb-Allah ibn Hazm, the governor of Lisbon, sent a message to Abd al-Rahman II in Cordoba, to which the emir responded by telling governors in the surrounding areas to be alert. Armies were assembled in the surrounding areas during this time, which would later be involved in the battles in and around Seville later that year. The Vikings besieged Lisbon for thirteen days before moving south. Their spoils here probably indicated a turn of the tide for them, and they likely  “sailed to Cadiz, then to Sidonia, then to Seville” in higher spirits, in anticipation of the booty to come. They engaged in battles along the way, and probably resupplied at these stops.

Ibn Idhari recounts the initial assault on Seville: “After some skirmishes with Muslims they (Majus) went to Kaptel where they stayed three days.” Ibn Hayyan gives us more information based on the work of Isa ibn Ahmad Al-Razi: “On the second day after their landing they sent five ships to Coria, by the Western bank of the river.” The Vikings evidently sailed up the Guadalquivir and set up their base at Qabtil. From there they conducted their operations. Their first attack against the Muslims took place at Coria, as presumably there were no significant settlements on Qabtil. After three days, the Viking fleet left Qabtil and “then they took Talyata, two miles from Seville. There they spent the night, and were seen next morning at Al-Fakkharin (Alfarache).” They then arrived at and assaulted Seville. Al-Razi’s account of the taking of Seville, told by ibn Hayyan, is the most useful and the most likely:

The Muslims that lived there and others that joined them went out and faced them–all spirited and eager to battle, but without any order or designated chief given the desertion of their governor, who had fled to the city of Carmona, leaving them without protection. When the Northmen got to the banks of the town, it became evident to them the weakness of its inhabitants, and so they sailed their ships against them, and by shooting arrows they dispersed the groups. They went out of their ships and fought against them on the banks of their river. The citizens of Seville were thus defeated, and none of them was able to resist the attacks–most of them ran away separately from the city, and the Northmen were able to enter the walls attacking those who still remained there and were too weak but still determined to fight, including women and children, who were killed or captured.

This account is contradicted by al-Qutiyya, who claims that “the inhabitants panicked and fled the city…None of the inhabitants of western al-Andalus attempted to resist the invaders,” but this seems unlikely, and probably arose from a corruption of an oral record that originated from the governor’s abandonment of Seville. Al-Qutiyya is a useful source on the retaking of Seville and the defeat of the Vikings, however, as his account adds information and a point of view not present in al-Razi. Al-Qutiyya’s family had lived in Seville at least since 844, and so had access to a more direct oral record of the Viking invasion. He was also a descendent of the Christians who converted to Islam after the Umayyad conquest of 711 (his name literally means “son of a Gothic woman”, and he claims descent from Wittiza, the last Visigothic king in Spain). This affects his account of the involvement of Musa ibn Musa, descendent of Cassius, who according to other chronicles had a lesser role in the rescue of Seville. Musa ibn Musa was the leader of a semi-independent Banu Qasi principality on the frontiers of al-Andalus, in the Ebro valley. The relationship between the Banu Qasi and the Emirate in the 9th century was tense and often openly antagonistic, as the Banu Qasi would frequently revolt against the authority in Cordoba, often allied with the Christian Pamplonan kings. Musa ibn Musa himself was the leader of many of these revolts.

According to ibn Idhari, the Vikings would remain in Seville for seven days “after letting the inhabitants suffer the terrors of imprisonment or death.” The Vikings continually received reinforcements, implying that only a contingent of their fleet engaged in the original taking of Seville, and more of their forces followed once the city had been occupied, to participate in the plunder and support the siege of the palace, which they would never take. Meanwhile, the Emirate recruited volunteers from Cordoba and the surrounding towns and countryside. They set up their base at Carmona, northeast of Seville, but were unable to take on the Vikings in the city until the volunteers from the Marches in northern al-Andalus, gathered in response to the Viking raid on Lisbon, arrived. Their leader was Musa ibn Musa, whom Abd al-Rahman II had implored to help them against the Viking invaders. Abd al-Rahman II reminded Musa ibn Musa of “his client status with the former caliph al-Walid ibn ‘Abd al-Malik, and his ancestor’s acceptance of Islam at his hands.” Because of this, “Musa softened in his attitude, and came with a large army, which he kept separate from the ministers’ men and the other troops of the Marches.” The moral message of Al-Qutiyya’s account was a warning against the dangers of political disunity. This message is strengthened by the account of Abd al-Rahman II’s dream, a literary invention that, while supporting the meaning of Al-Qutiyya’s account, damages its credibility. In his dream, Abd al-Rahman II entered “the Great Mosque in Seville…and found the Prophet Muhammad—peace and praises be upon him—lying in the prayer-niche, dead, and wrapped in a shroud.” He awoke and consulted his soothsayers on the dream’s meaning. They answered that “This is where his Faith will die”, and a short time later, the Vikings occupied the city. Al-Qutiyya describes the Vikings attempting in vain to burn the mosque with arrows. When they then tried to burn the mosque by piling wood and reeds in the central aisle and setting them on fire, a young man came “from the direction of the prayer-niche” and drove them off. Al-Qutiyya makes a point to describe the young man as “beautiful”. It is clear that al-Qutiyya wants us to equate the young man with Musa ibn Musa. This episode also shows al-Qutiyya’s acquaintance with Christian folklore, as ex-machina interventions by holy figures are rare in Arabic histories. This was probably a remnant of al-Qutiyya’s Visigothic Christian background. The chronicle depicts how the outcast descendant of Cassius overcame the barriers of disunity between the Emirate and the frontierlands and joined the fight against the common enemy, rescuing Abd al-Rahman II—and Islam itself—from defeat.

With Musa ibn Musa’s help, along with that of the incorruptible wazir and hajib ‘Isa ibn Shuhayd, the eunuch Nasr, and Muhammad ibn Rustam, a prince from Tahert in the Maghreb, Abd al-Rahman II’s forces were able to lay a trap for the Viking raiding parties. The Cordoban ministers informed the volunteers from the Marches that the Vikings “went out of Seville every day in raiding parties, some towards Firish (Constantina), and Fuente de Cantos, others towards Cordova and Moron.” They hid themselves in the village of Kintush Mu’afir (Quirtas de Moafer) south of Seville and waited for one of the raiding parties to appear. In the morning, a large Viking raiding party emerged from the city, heading in the direction of Moron. Al-Qutiyya asserts that they numbered 16,000, a completely implausible number that should not be trusted under any circumstances. The Muslim army “waited until the enemy had gone some distance, then they cut off their retreat, and put them all to the sword.” They entered the city, and found the citadel besieged by a fraction of the Viking forces, as “in addition to the group that was killed, another had gone towards Fuente de Cantos, another towards Cordova and yet another towards Banl’l-Layth (Benilaiz).” Seeing the Muslim army and cavalry, the Vikings fled upstream “towards the fort al-Za’waq,” meeting up with the rest of the raiding parties. They then engaged in several losing battles with the Muslim forces, until they were defeated in a decisive battle at Talyata, close to Seville, where “many were killed, others hanged at Seville, others hanged in the palm trees at Talyata, and thirty of their ships were burnt.” The ones who escaped then proceeded downstream, harassed by the Muslim forces. When they had gone a sizable distance downstream, and had freed themselves from the direct danger of a further defeat at the hands of the Muslims, the Vikings 

“Called out to the troops, ‘If you want to ransom the hostages we have, stop firing!’ So they stopped and most of the hostages among their prisoners were ransomed. The enemy did not want gold or silver: rather food and clothing.”

Many of their ships had been captured, their plunder seized, and now they were forced to ransom their captives for food and clothing rather than gold and silver. The Vikings “went to Niebla, and then to Lisbon, and were no more heard of.”

The Vikings would descend upon Iberia several more times during the remainder of the Vikings Age, the next in 859-861, led by Danish chieftains Hastein and Bjorn Ironside. This expedition would continue into the Mediterranean, to Nakur in the Maghreb, southern Frankia, Luna in Italy (which they reportedly assumed was Rome), and possibly to Constantinople. On these expeditions they would find a similarly stout resistance to the raids in 844.

It has been suggested that Iberia was a long way for the Vikings to travel in order to raid, which is why they didn’t raid more frequently or with a greater force. This has no basis in fact, as the Viking fleet involved in the expedition was comparatively large (according to the chronicles, over a hundred ships, an overestimate that demonstrates that the fleet was impressive), and since the Vikings were already based in Frankia and actively raiding in that region, Iberia would have been a logical next step, especially considering the richness of the peninsula at the time. Distance would not have been a main concern for the Vikings, if they were able to get rich off of their plunder. The main reason the Vikings didn’t return frequently to Iberia was because the conditions there were not conducive to profitable raiding. The populations of Iberia were accustomed to war, especially on the frontiers, the militaries were already mobilized, well trained, and well commanded. The typical strategy of the Vikings was to base themselves on an island or other insular location and send out raiding parties to plunder the surrounding area, stocking up on supplies for the winter, when the enemy would not try to attack them. Once spring came around, they would spread out over a larger area, making the supply of smaller groups more manageable, while maintaining a fortified central base in case they were attacked. This ended up being disastrous for them in al-Andalus, because the Muslim armies caught on to their strategy and successfully counteracted it. When supply becomes a problem for the Vikings, they have been defeated, or at least greatly weakened. This is made clear by how short the Viking stay in Iberia was. Expeditions in Frankia could last up to six months or longer because this strategy enabled them to operate without issues of supply, but the Vikings expedition to Iberia in 844 lasted a little more than a month. Also, due to the lack of any archaeological evidence, it is apparent that the Vikings were unable to make any network to connect their expedition back to the major bases in Frankia. This would have made the Iberia route much more hazardous, and Viking chiefs would think twice before making the perilous journey. All these factors probably contributed to a bad air around the prospect of raiding in Iberia, and it would be attempted rarely after that.

After the Vikings left, both the Cordobans and the Asturians set about redoubling their defenses. Abd al-Rahman II reportedly built a wall around Seville. Given that Seville already had a wall, built in the Roman age during the reign of Julius Caesar and subsequently bolstered, changed, and rebuilt over the years, this passage points to the rebuilding or further fortification of the walls of Seville, rather than their construction. In addition, new ships were built, armies mobilized, and watchtowers activated. Iberia’s state of constant military alertness and mobilization was expanded to watch for attacks from the seas, and the phenomenon of the Vikings was co-opted for state and church propagandizing purposes.

What about on the Viking side of things? They plundered extensively, certainly, and seemed especially successful in Lisbon, Cadiz, and Sidonia. However, they lost much of this plunder during their series of defeats in and around Seville, when many of their men and ships were seized. A large portion of their plunder was likely human beings. There is some evidence that black African slaves were taken back to Ireland, but the majority of captives would have been ransomed, as we see in ibn al-Qutiyya’s account. In addition, there are two charters that reference sales of property in relation to debts resulting from ransoms paid to the Vikings in the 11th century. One of them is paid in silver, the other in clothing, weaponry, cattle, and salt. As mentioned above, however, there is essentially no archaeological evidence in Scandinavia or in Ireland of coinage or weaponry originating from Iberia in the relevant period, suggesting their profits were degradable (as with the food and clothing they received in their flight from Seville), or very small.

Yet despite their small impact in Iberia in comparison to other victims of Viking raids, the stories of their expeditions were told and retold again and again, and passed down through the ages. It speaks to their memorability that rather than occupying a segment of the historical record proportional to their impact, their image was retold until all the people who had witnessed it, and the governments they lived under, had disappeared, and the regions in which they wrote had changed hands more times than one could count.

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