Vikings in Iberia
[11][12][13] However, the key evidence, a thirteenth-century account by Ibn Diḥya, in which an Arab diplomat Al-Ghazāl ("the gazelle") is dispatched to a pagan court during the reign of Abd-ar-Raḥman II, has been shown neither clearly to refer to Vikings nor probably even to have happened.
[14] It is accepted, however, that in the tenth century the Jewish Hispano-Arabic merchant Ibrahim ibn Yakub Al-Tartushi travelled to the Scandinavian trading town of Hedeby in Schleswig.
En er aptr fara runnar unnviggs og haf sunnan, rístum, heim at hausti, hvalfrón til Nerbónar.
[21] In particular, the late ninth- or early tenth-century Chronicle of Alfonso III adds that after plundering a number of coastal villages they were ultimately repulsed in the vicinity of Farum Brecantium (i.e. the Tower of Hercules).
[27][28] A series of early medieval rock castles placed atop hills and mountains with large visual field over the ocean, extending along the coasts of Galicia, have been tentatively identified as temporary shelters and watchtowers built by local communities or lords against Norse raids.
Returning to the scene of Viking incursions in northern Iberia and al-Andalus, but meeting with little success, they sailed on to raid targets on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Vikings seem to have over-wintered in Francia, perhaps waiting on the northern shore of the Mediterranean for favourable tides and currents to exit the sea through the Straits of Gibraltar.
For example, on the basis of an account by Al-Bakrī it has been supposed that in 859 or 860, Vikings sailed through Gibraltar and raided the little Moroccan state of Nekor, and defeated a Moorish army.
[46] These activities are vaguely consonant with two thirteenth-century Scandinavian sources for the life of Eiríkr Blóðøx (the Historia Norwegiae and Ágrip) situating his death (implicitly in the 950s) in Spain while raiding.
[50][51] Although the reliability of these narratives is questionable, a 1015 charter records Amarelo Mestáliz selling land in northern Portugal to clear a debt incurred by ransoming his daughters:a great number of Vikings (Lotnimis) arrived in July and occupied the territory between the rivers Douro and Ave for nine months.
[52]Likewise a few years later the crew of a 'barca de Laudomanes' ('ship of Vikings') took the following ransom for a woman called Meitilli and her daughter: a cloak, a sword, a shirt, three pieces of linen, a cow and some salt.
Dated in 1024, a royal charter of king Alfonso V of León annexed the bishopric of Tui to that of Santiago, because the city had been ravaged by the gens Leodemanorum, and the local Bishop and many other were captured and took afar, while other people have been sold or assassinated.
[54] A royal charter of king Veremud III of León, dated in 1032, narrates a recent battle of the forces of count Rodrigo Romaniz, including Norsemen allies, against a troop of Basque marauders who had occupied a stronghold in Mt.
[4] Various historians have suggested that the well evidenced development of naval forces and fortifications across the Iberian peninsula during the tenth and eleventh centuries can be partly attributed to Viking activity.
For example, it has also been suggested that the first navy of the Emirate of Córdoba[2] was built in response to the raid of 844,[60] and according to Fletcher "Alfonso III was sufficiently worried by the threat of Viking attack to establish fortified strong points near his coastline, as other rulers were doing elsewhere".
[63] In the popular history TV show "Vikings" Bjorn Ironside sails to the Mediterranean and launches a raid on Spain under Muslim control.
by Mário Jorge Barroca, Armando Coelho Ferreira da Silva (Porto: CITCEM – Centro de Investigação Transdisciplinar Cultura, Espaço e Memória, 2018), ISBN 978-989-8351-97-5, doi:10.21747/9789898351975/mil
