Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Mick Harper]

I think it's agreed, even by Tissie and Borrie, that Dark Age Britain was fairly poor. But then again so was Dark Age Scandinavia so Viking labour was cheap. Cheapish. Dark Age Britain in the Viking Age was an organised political state (sometimes states) with an organised army and an organised navy so, at first sight, Viking raiding expeditions would have to have been mounted on a serious -- and therefore an expensive -- scale. [Obviously 'Danish' state invasions were but this is a different matter.]

It is impossible to envision 'booty' on the scale anywhere close to the costs of a large-scale, long-distance maritime expedition. Let's get real! OK, say you occupy and sack a small coastal town -- it would have to be small otherwise there would be a defensive infrastructure. What's on offer? Nothing in terms of moveable goods. This is a near cashless subsistence economy for Chrissake. What were you expecting? Let's hope it was market day so at least you'll be able to feed the troops. Actually the only thing on offer with any kind of cash value are the people themselves. So, OK, you bundle a few hundred bewildered peasants aboard and take them off somewhere. Hope you get past the Anglo-Saxon navy wherever you're going. Oh yes, and make sure you amend the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before you go because there's no mention of such slaving expeditions. But the ASC does mention....

[Mick Harper]

... raids on monasteries. Now this is truly baffling. Dark Age monasteries are pictured in the popular imagination (largely because the Vikings made a bee-line for them) as repositories of all sorts of treasure -- you know the drill from numberless recreations: golden candlesticks, gospel books studded with jewels, silver crucifixes, blah blah. This cannot have been the case for the simple reason that monasteries are defenceless and isolated so if there was anything worth having the local baddies would have had it away on their toes long before any Scandibaddies turned up.

But even if the locals were somehow kept away ('Ooh, you'll go to hell') the idea that candlesticks etc would pay for a long distance maritime voyage is laughable. But they must have happened because they're in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle aren't they ...?

[Boreades]

I think it's agreed, even by Tissie and Borrie, that Dark Age Britain was fairly poor.

Oh no it's not. Plenty of evidence of a resurgence in trade from Britain after the Romans left.

Anyway, you've been saying for years the Dark ages are a myth.

When did you change your mind?

[Boreades]

Oh yes, and make sure you amend the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before you go because there's no mention of such slaving expeditions.

Do you actually check any of these sources before you start spouting?

A few seconds research is all it takes. And that's before you get to the sleight-of-hand of saying oh they're not slaves, they're just serfs.

[Boreades]

This cannot have been the case for the simple reason that monasteries are defenceless and isolated so if there was anything worth having the local baddies would have had it away on their toes long before any Scandibaddies turned up.

Surely even the Knotting Hull intelligentsia has heard of protection rackets?

As in, pay up or yer nice little monastery gets roughed-up.

IT IS always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: –
"We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away."

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: –
"Though we know we should defeat you,
we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away."

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we've proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

[Mick Harper]

Do you actually check any of these sources before you start spouting? A few seconds research is all it takes. And that's before you get to the sleight-of-hand of saying oh they're not slaves, they're just serfs.

A few seconds reading wot I wrote would reveal that I actually said that Anglo-Saxon England was full of slaves. We are only concerned here with the maritime slave trade. Let me know if there are any references to this in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

Oh no it's not. Plenty of evidence of a resurgence in trade from Britain after the Romans left.

For goodness sake, Borry, develop a sense of proportion

Anyway, you've been saying for years the Dark ages are a myth. When did you change your mind?

I have not changed my mind. It's what I am trying to show you. With very little effect it would seem

Surely even the Knotting Hull intelligentsia has heard of protection rackets? As in, pay up or yer nice little monastery gets roughed-up.

I understand Guy Ritchie has bought the rights to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

[hvered]

A few seconds research is all it takes.

It's not clear what your source is but the author must have been fairly desperate to cite the Life of St Swithun. Not usually considered a reliable source.

[Mick Harper]

There you are wrong, Hatty. If it rains on St Swithin's day it will continue raining for forty days. That's fact. They would hardly say so if he was a figment of somebody's imagination.

[hvered]

The so-called Vita S. Swithuni of Lantfred and Wulfstan, written about 1000, hardly contain any biographical fact; all that has in later years passed for authentic detail of Swithun's life is extracted from a biography ascribed to Goscelin of St Bertin's, a monk who came over to England with Hermann, bishop of Salisbury from 1058 to 1078.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swithun

Goscelin of St Bertin was a well-known hagiographer. There was local rivalry between St Augustine’s Canterbury and St Gregory’s, founded by Lanfranc, as they were competing for land grants in and around Canterbury -- ‘in each case the participants forged documents and publicly abused each other'.

They both claimed the corpse of St Mildred and in the 1090s the monks of St Augustine's commissioned Goscelin to write ‘against the inane usurpers of St Mildred the Virgin’. His opening salvo was 'St Gregory’s is insolently encouraging superstition among the masses and its historical evidence is shaky' [he should know] and went on to prove his case based on a series of miracles

He tells how St Mildred once stood up in her tomb at St Augustine’s and hit the abbey’s janitor, because he was asleep; and on another occasion she hit a man who fell asleep while praying at her tomb. Moreover, when the rival claimants used the ordeal of water to establish the truth, the trussed-up child they used would not sink into the consecrated water, even when the canons of St Gregory’s pushed him. Goscelin’s most recent evidence was that on St Mildred’s last feast day one of the young monks at St Augustine’s had foretold rain, because Mildred brought them annual fertility, and it had duly rained.

St Augustine's Abbey got St Mildred, St Swithun went to Winchester Cathedral where he duly performed miracles though by that time the body had been split up, head to Canterbury, arm to Peterborough.

[Mick Harper]

... and bollocks to Borry.