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John LandrøSeptember 5 2005
Eng-113English Communication
Lesson 06
I.
In May 2001 Queen Elizabeth II visited Norway. On that special occasion the readers of The Timescould read the following leading article.
The top of Europe
Norway has few people but huge achievements
For a country of little more than four million people, which achieved modern independent statehood only in 1905, Norway has played a remarkable role in European, and recently world, affairs. It began the last century amid an explosion of creativity – Munch, Grieg and Ibsen – whose influence still marks art, music and drama today. Over the next 100 years it moved from a society of rugged fishermen and farmers living along the rugged northern coast of the continent to Europe’s richest nation, a Scandinavian Kuwait producing oil from colossal sea platforms and spending its riches with Lutheran caution. And now it remains a proudly independent anomaly, a prosperous, internationalist country that has twice rejected European Union membership.
Like the contrast between the dark winter and the present long summer days, Norway has also known the worst of war and the opportunities of peace. One of Hitler’s early targets, Norwegians suffered a campaign all the more terrible because of the active collaboration of Quisling – the name became a byword for treachery – and his Norwegian nazis. Oslo was not liberated until after the war ended; yet Norway threw itself into post-war peace-building, providing the first United Nations Secretary-General in Trygve Lie and doing more to foster peace in the Middle East than any UN or American invention. Oslo is the only serious negotiator seeking to end the war in Sri Lanka, and Norwegian diplomacy is active in Sudan, the Baltic and post-communist Russia.
The queen will build on Norway’s ancient links with Britain, and specially Scotland, during her state visit. She and King Harald share a common ancestor in Queen Victoria; the former King Haakon sought refuge in London during the war, for which his countrymen have yearly thanked the capital with a Christmas tree; Norwegians have long kept Scottish shops in business and Newcastle University in graduates; and centuries ago Sir Patric Spens, the ballad relates, lost his wife setting sail to Norway to fetch home the King’s daughter. Britons have long admired the spirit of the Vikings, the explorations of Thor Heyerdahl, and the beauty of the fjords, the au pairs and the cruise ships. Today the Queen can salute them all.
II.
‘The queen will build on Norway’s ancient links with Britain, and specially Scotland, during her state visit.’(See preceding article). The most important ancient link, of course, is what Robert M. Rayner in A Concise History of Britain calls The Danes (835 – 1035). You can read about this period in The Times Atlas of World History Third edition 1989, p.110-111. Here an extract.
The 9th and 10th century invasions of Europe: Vikings, Magyars, Saracens
The Vikings also had the advantage of surprise when they descended on the coasts and rivers of Western Europe but, unlike the Magyars, they could be colonists as well as raiders. Once the Norwegians had discovered that there were islands in the North Atlantic with an environment similar to that of their homeland, many were prepared to look for a better life overseas, particularly when Harald Fairhair tried to unify the country. The Danes also settled overseas, no doubt partly because there were better opportunities for plundering and extorting treasure in Western Europe than in Scandinavia. The Norwegian and Danish leaders of expeditions appear to have been exiles who had been banished for offences, or members of unsuccessful branches of royal families who, having failed to make themselves kings, hoped to gain both wealth and reputation in the west.
The earliest Viking raids were towards the end of the eight century - the best known though probably not the first, was on the Northumbrian monastery of Lindisfarne in 793. In the following century several Norwegian bases were established in Ireland, the most famous being Dublin, founded by 841, and from such places warrior chiefs led expeditions to plunder not only monasteries and other centres in Ireland, but also in Britain and further afield. The Danish attacks began about a generation later than the Norwegian, with a raid on the market of Dorestad in 834, the first of a series of regular attacks on that place. By the middle of the century bands of Danes were making their way by boat and horse to attack churches and towns in many parts of Britain and the Frankish Empire. To facilitate these raids they established bases, some of which eventually became centres of Scandinavian settlements, such as the Five Boroughs of the English Midlands. In such colonies the Vikings lost their advantages of mobility and surprise and were vulnerable to pressure that eventually led them to accept both the overlordship of French and English kings and conversion to Christianity.
At the same time as these western enterprises, Swedes were crossing the Baltic to visit markets, notably Bolgar on the middle Volga, in which Muslims were eager to acquire furs and slaves that the Swedes, and others, could gather in the forests of northern Russia. Swedish leaders who made themselves masters of such places as Kiev and Novgorod were soon slavicised, and maintained no more than dynastic links with Scandinavia. The rulers of Kiev came into contact with Byzantium but its influence was religious and cultural rather than economic, and the main markets for the produce of the Kiev region continued to be the Islamic east rather than the Byzantine south.
The sudden extension of Scandinavian activity overseas was in part caused by the growing demand for goods that could only be obtained from the north; walrus tusks were at that time the main source of ivory in Europe and furs from the arctic regions of Scandinavia and Russia were greatly prized. On the eve of the Viking period there was a growing commerce in coastal markets called wics. The greatest of these was the Wijk at Dorestad but there were many others, including Quententovic, near Boulogne, and Hamwic, later to develop into Southhampton. Scandinavians were encouraged to search even further afield for fresh supplies of skins, furs and tusks and a contemporary account by a 9th-century Norwegian, Ottar, tells of a voyage he made from his home in northern Norway into the White Sea in search of walrus.
Although the Vikings contributed to the consolidation of early Russia, in England the kings of Wessex, particularly Edward the Elder (899-924) and Athelstan (924-99) fought back, and in Gaul the Frankish rulers virtually capitulated, leaving defence to the local magnates. The result was the fragmentation of public authority and a great upsurge of feudalism which, though it had originated earlier in the dark days of the 7th century, had been held in check by Charlemagne. Even in England the number of free cultivators declined, as freeman commended themselves to lords for protection. In Gaul peasant freemen virtually disappeared and society was polarized between nobles and serfs. In Germany also power devolved into the hands of dukes and margraves that guarded the frontiers. From the beginning of the 10th century the map of Western Europe was a feudal map, an intricate interlacing of counties, communities, principalities and lordships, and it was not until the 12th century that consolidation again got under way.
III.
Can you think of any links between Britain and Norwayin the period between the attack on the Northumbrian monastery of Lindisfarne in 793 and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Norway in May 2001?
IV. Please consider: Should monarchy, in Britain and in Norway, be abolished?
British monarchs since the Conquest
House of Normandy House of Stuart
1066-1087 William I 1603-1625 James I
1087-1100 William II 1625-1649 Charles I
1100-1135 Henry I 1649-1653 Commonwealth
1135 – 1154 Stephen 1653-1658 Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell
House of Plantagenet 1658-1659 Protectorate of Richard Cromwell
1154-1189 Henry II House of Stuart
1189-1199 Richard I 1660-1685 Charles II
1199-1216 John 1685-1688 James II
1216-1272 Henry III 1689-1694 William and Mary (jointly)
1272-1307 Edward I 1694-1702 William III (sole ruler)
1307-1327 Edward II 1702-1714 Anne
1327-1377 Edward III
1377-1399 Richard II
House of Hanover
1714-1727 George I
House of Lancaster 1727-1760 George II
1399-1413 Henry IV 1760-1820 George III
1413-1422 Henry V 1820-1830 George IV
1422-1461 Henry VI 1830-1837 William IV
1837-1901 Victoria
House of York
1461-1483 Edward IV House of Saxe-Coburg
1483 Edward V 1901-1910 Edward VII
1483-1485 Richard III
House of Windsor
House of Tudor 1910-1936George V
1485-1509 Henry VII 1936 Edward VIII
1509-1547 Henry VIII 1936-1952 George VI
1547-1553 Edward VI 1952- Elizabeth II
1553-1558 Mary I
1558-1603 Elizabeth I