"Viking "armies", fact or fantasy" Topic

I'm going to break out of my horse and musket mold and try some new periods.There are several companies that offer good deals on Viking armies ( Whitecross games, BTD to name a couple). My question is did them Vikings regularly field armies per se? I'm familiar with them as raiders but I'm unfamiliar with Vikings taking the field at army strength. Who would be their historical foes? I'm sure there are lots of folks out there with a wealth of knowledge on the subject.

z oops,sorry.I didn't mean to cross post.

Well....they occupied a VERY large chunk of the UK for a long time. You can't do that with just raiders. Foes would be Saxon, Scott, Irish........

Well, for starters, there were the English. The Kings of Denmark were also Kings of England, and the city of York was their power centre in England.

Viking armies fought as allies and as foes of various Irish kingdoms. Many modern Irish cities (including Dublin) were founded by Vikings, and they had to fight to keep them.

The Jarls of the Orkneys frequently fought against the Scots.

A Viking fleet sailed up the Seine and beseiged Paris.

Vikings travelled over the Russian rivers and founded cities along the way to Byzantium. These Vikings had to fight to establish and protect their new homes.

I don't have any reference materials in front of me, otherwise I would post dates and locations of battles.

Hope that helps for starters!

Will

Lets not forget the fun they had in France, and the siege of Paris.

Normans = North men = you can have a chunk of Northen France if you'll just stop the others raiding us !

Viking is an occupation, not a nationality, if you want to be picky. I suppose you would say there were Danish, Norwegian and Swedish armies, but Vikings were merely raiders.

If they come mob-handed with enough fellas to take over your country (like they did in England, Normandy and to a certain extent, Ireland) then they're not really being Vikings.

Harald Hardraada (Sp?), King of Norway, claimed the throne of England at the death of Edward the Confessor. He invaded England in 1066, and was met by King Harold Godwinson at Stamford Bridge. Harold was victorious, and Hardraada was slain.

Whether they are armies or pirates depends also on what you want to game--skirmish gaming of raids can be colorful and fun, as can be pitched battles between larger forces (think Stamford Bridge). There are plenty of rules for each. In the former, the rules play up the disorganized nature of the bands, in the latter less so (but still less cohesive than a Roman legion for instance).

Like Polynikes said, no such thing as viking armies. Viking litterly is the verb - to raid.

So, if you were Norse and going raiding, you were going Viking.

Thats funny. In Norway they told me they were called Vikings after the viks (water inlets, pronounced to rhyme with nick, not ike) that they used to sail out of. Vik-ing.

As mentioned, the viking warrior king, Hardrada, invaded northern England in 1066. a couple of 'big' battles resulted. We are talking about 5 or 6,000 soldiers per side, though these viking troops would have been considered amongst the best in europe at that time.

Doing these battles would give you Viking Vs Saxon

At around the same time, William and his Norman army invaded southern England. You could examine a 'what if' by testing a situation in which the saxons are defeated in the North (by the Vikings) and also in the South (by the Normans) and that there is then a showdown between the victorious Vikings & Normans in the same year. Again, armies in the region of 5 - 6000 would be about right.

I suspect that the armies at Stamford Bridge may have been on the large side of the 5 to 6,000 estimate. I have seen estimates of 7,000 for King Harold's army at Hastings. This was after the Stamford Bridge losses, and any detachments, desertions etc.

Also, what about the Viking armies that extinguished Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia etc and which almost conquered Wessex?

I read a book about Hastings and they do a thorough examination of the logistics available to the Saxons and Normans and conclude that their armies might have been much bigger than anybody expected. Certainly the population and organisation of the time would have been able to support armies massing tens of thousands of men rather than thousands, especially in the view that the Crusades with massive movements of troops are only a single generation away. Surprisingly most of the work about Hastings was done in Victorian times and almost nobody has done serious research since, taking their version at face value for the better part of 150 years.

The wars against Alfred (and contemporaries) and the Cnut experience certainly involved armies.

On the skirmish part, what are some good sets of rules for skirmish battles in medieval times. For knights, Normans, Saxons, Vikings, and so forth.

They allso fought skags, arabs, sack a city of 50,000 in italy. Settleled along the voga.They where called the Russ. Its where we get Russian from. These guys could party. Allso fight battles. William and Harlda where sons of brothers. The invasion of england was a group plan.
the sneaky bastard. Yes willam was Didn't seem to make much of a difference in his life though

MWalston to answer your question yes the Norsemen as they were called by everone else regardless if they were Danes, Norwegian, Swedes, etc., DID go a Viking and DID field large professional and not so professional armies for the time period. Remember the Varangian Guard the Byzantine Emperors employed as their elite heavy infantry were all Northmen. Reserch shows that the Danes were perhaps the best at formal military organization. Some good reading on the Viking period are as follows;

"Vikings the North Atlantic Saga" by the Smithsonian Press
"Vikings!" by Magnus Magnusson (my personal favorite)
"The Vikings" by Else Roesdahl
"A History of Vikings" by Gwyn Jones

My favorite games systems for playing Viking raiders or armies are Warhammer Ancient Battles Shieldwall supplement, or Pig Wars (a fun skirmish game)

Hope this helps.

Kim

As much as I hate too use them, WAB and shieldwall were my choices to game with. Historicals are a nonexistant species around here (there is one other fellow but I haven't talked to him in over a year). WAB will allow me to game with the local GW crowd with a system they are familiar with though I will be painting both armies. I figured on Saxons,Normans and now Norsemen. Fortunately WAB doesn't have the Gimmicks that I despise in WFB (magic,Ubermenschen,Monsters, and unbalanced point considerations) but I would realy rather use a better rule system.

Like many things, it depends on the time period. The Vikings started off as raiders, and decided things looked so good that they would move in. Then they became settlers and conquerors.

In England, they created the "Kingdom" of Jorvik. Eventually you see the formation of "Great Armies" which are armies of conquest. These armies nearly conquered England during the reign of Alfred the Great. They caused so much trouble in France that the French king granted them the duchy of Normandy.

They basically caused trouble wherever they went, and they went everywhere.

For a campaign, you could do the battles of Alfred the Great. You could have the siege of Mikkelgaard (Constantinople) because the Vikings caused the Byzantines no end of grief. You could have them fighting Arabs, with the loosers riding down a very nasty horse. You could have them in Ireland where they take on Brian Boru at Clontarf and in Scotland fighing Sommerled the Viking Slayer. They could fight the forces of Charlemagne. You could have them in Russia, where they enslave the slavs, and fight nomads.

You can use them in armies for large battles, or as raiders in skirmish games. When you get tired of calling them Vikings, call them Saxons, and use the figures to fight Normans. Or still call them Vikings and fight the Normans anyway.

The Vikings are perhaps one of the most versatile armies out there.

Actually, for this period, WAB may be one of the better sets of rules. It certainly catches the color of the period better than most other rules. Steve Patten did a nice job with his Shieldwall supplement. While some gamers may not like the exagerated differences between armies, they do add character to each game. And this period is all about character and color.

If you are dealing with fantasy gamers, games of weird warhammer (fantasy vs. historical armies) is a non-threatening way of introducing them to historicals.

You might want to look at SAGA's Medieval Warfare, primarily because these rules place a real emphasis on this period. They have published a campaign book for the 1066 campaign, where two of the three battles involve Vikings. They also have a scenario book devoted almost entirely to battles for this period, including a number which involve Vikings.

There are a number of skirmish rules out there, including Warhammer. A lot of people like Pig Wars. Another set I have been wanting to try is Battle Troll, which even includes campaign rules, Pigs and Glory.

Since we actually know so little about this period, most of what you are going to do in a game involves conjecture and guesswork. You certainly are not going to find good descriptions of armies, and can count yourself lucky if you can find the names of the commanders at a given battle. If there ever was a period where you can indulge in artistic license without being called on the spot, this is it.

Zarquon, It seems to me that weird warhammer wouldn't work. I've got Skythians 60% light horse,20% noble Cav.20% foot light foot troops.The average Warhammer player won't give up seige machines,monsters or magic in a game and how would a lowly human historical leader stand up to a Savage Orc Bigun or whatever. The two don't seem to be very compatible other than the combat system. I have the WAB rules book and overall though not my first choice is a marginally acceptable system.

--I read a book about Hastings and they do a thorough examination of the logistics available to the Saxons and Normans and conclude that their armies might have been much bigger than anybody expected.--

I have come to that conclusion also: and now when I play out Hastings, I have over 10,000 on the English side (an army of that size more adequately fits the scale terrain) and somewhat less for the Norman/French. I concluded that Normandy could easily have fielded an army of up to 30,000 men (using the same percentages of population that Harald Hardrada fielded of Norway's manpower). William the Conqueror kept many troops at home (to protect his duchy from his numerous enemies while he was away in England), fielded a quarter of that, and made up the lack with mercenaries. His total force of invasion, at the start (including those who came over later, because he didn't have the ships to get them all across in one go), was c. 17,000 men and 3,000 to 4,000 horses.

(I have a monograph on the subject, at 1066.us)

In England during the Viking invasions and conquests of the 9th century, the enemy was called the "force". (Lending an original meaning to the words "May the force be with you.") It was almost a full-time army of occupation, which split into sections to go off and attack here or there, and then rejoined for larger efforts of conquest: part of this "force" (as I recall) went over the Channel to France at one point. Rolf the Ganger's army of "Danes" was apparently independent of this "force", tho he had a "perpetual alliance of friendship" with king Athelstan. (Sounds like a euphemism for the relationship between a bully and the man who pays him to go away.)

MtM

That's supposed to read: (NOT including those that came over later,....

I do wish that an editor followed me around whenever I post anywhere: I can't see obvious errors in what I say until I click "Submit" and then it's too late :(

MtM

I highly recommend this book:

"The Viking Art of War" by Paddy Griffith, Greenhill Books, 1995, ISBN 1-85367-208-4

It presents a military analysis of the operational capabilities of the Vikings, from raiding parties to a "Great Army." Certainly made me realize that there was more to being Viking than owning a longboat and knowing the best way to loot and pillage!

Dave Talley posts occasionally, and he may have the most experience with "weird warhammer." I think you need some sort of priest with dispell power (sort of like the Dwarf runelord) to counter magic. The lobbas actually exist in WAB as well, but are given a different name.

I have proposed my own balancing scheme for Warhammer (and maybe other) games which basically is a bidding scheme:

After armies have been selected and deployed, one or both players may elect to switch sides. If neither player wants to switch, the battle goes on. If both players want to switch, they switch sides. If one player wants to switch, but the other doesn't, the player who does not want to switch can "buy" his army back.

He does this by removing one or more figures. After removing these figures, the switching player can either agree to take his army back, and the non-switching player takes back his army without the figures which he removed. Alternatively, the switching player can keep the now weakened army. I would suggest giving the non-switching player three opportunities to remove figures from his army.

This strikes me as a quick and dirty way to balance armies without worrying about points. As you can tell, it is a variation on the "knife and cake" method. If you have an opponent who throws too much stuff at you, you would simply switch positions and force him to remove all of the "cheese" until you felt comfortable -- or he could fight against his own army with your army.

Of course, sometimes getting a munchkin type to go along with something which is fair and equitable can be something of a challenge...

In answer to the original question, the size of Viking armies is a problematical one.

The Anglo Saxon chronicle refers to both Vikings (a noun, people, not a verb: get your Old Norse right: the gentleman who referred to the water inlet is correct) and the Northmen (Normanni).

The forces landed by raiding Vikings were classed as "here".
Sadly, Anglo Saxon is an imprecise language and "here" refers to any group of men in excess of 30.

However, the invasions of the 860s of England were referred to as "micel here", literally "great army" and it is assumed that these were larger.

The victories of the Vikings in Britain in the late Ninth Century led to the conquest and settlement of East Anglia, Northern Mercia, and Southern Northumbria. This was steadily eroded by pressure from the West Saxons in the South and the rump of the Anglian kingdom in the North. By the 950s the last of the Viking kingdoms had been subdued and incorporated into the "Kingdom of the Englisc".

The Vikings return to Britain as a conquering force during the reign of Aethelraed II and inflict the defeat at Maldon on the Saxons. Although stirring, the Maldon poetry overplays the significance of the result as the English then bribe the Viking leader to go back to Norway with men, money and Christian missionaries.

The Danes return at the beginning of the Eleventh Century and after a protracted war acquire the English throne for 40 years before the West Saxon dynasty returns with Edward the Confessor.

Other actions in the West include the devastation of Ireland and the establishment of the Kingdom of Ath Cliath in Dublin. The Dubliners tended to meddle in everyone's problems in IReland and even after the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 remained a significant force to be reckoned with.

In France, the warleader Hrolf menaced Charles the Weak of France into giving him the Duchy of Normandy as Duke Rollo. This was a reasonable idea given that it stopped Viking incursions into Northern France. The poacher did indeed turn gamekeeper.

I vaguely remember a Viking raid on Andalusia and then there were Viking incursions in North Germany and the Baltic.

Then again there were the Norse in modern Scotland, Macbeth being Thorfinn Macbeth Norse mormaer of the Isles and Orkney.

Oh yes, there were large Viking armies.

Have you ever noticed that significant Norse leaders had spent some time in the Byzantine "Varangian Guard"? Using the Swedish-run Volga River trade route, they would travel to Constantinople and be hired.

The Norse were literate at a time when everyone else in Europe (except the irish) were illiterate Runestaves bearing messages were found in Bergen. So fielding an organized army would not have been too far a stretch for them. They fielded some sizable armies for the times, both for fights in their own lands and for battles abroad. Unlike the myth of barbaric savagery, the Nordic folks were quite educated for their time.

The short answer is yes Vikings can have and did have massed armies (remember this is the dark ages so a few thousand is a army anywhere is western Europe.) This is a period of time when a different ethnicity was consider the next village even though they spoke the same langue warship the same gods and pretty much saw life the same way. Kings, dukes, etc. were only those titles because they had followers who supported that notion. Where these followers came from was only a minor consideration. Depending on where the battle is you would find a concentration of Norse form a particular part of Scandinavia but there would be other Norse. Also depending on the time there would be Norse from settlements outside of Scandinavia. Later some Armies would have men that were only partly of Norse ancestry and even some indigenous warriors.

Thortrains, with respect to Dark Age literacy utter rot.

By this point the Irish educational Renaissance was over, its proponents spread across Europe in the Gaelic intellectual diaspora.

The scribes of Anglo Saxon England had a fully functioning bureaucracy with written procedure and royal writs. Italy was a still vaguely civilised place, France was enjoying the Carolingian renovatio imperii and once you get over the Pyrenees into Spain ,you're talking extremely sophisticated and literate societies.

Compared with the beauty of uncial or minscule scripts, scratching a few marks on a stick is not a sign of literacy or sophistication

The Viking Art of War by Paddy Griffith
Irish Battles, Forget the author.
Shieldwall (For the pictures and ideas of trooptypes and army composition)
Two Hour Wargames. Warrior KIngs, aimed mainly at 15mm "Big" Battles, and Mayhem-Warrior Kings, aimed mainly at 25mm "small" skirmishes. Ironic that big battles have smaller figures.
These and figures should be sufficient. My "viking" figures have served as varangians for Byzantium and as norse-irish against the anglo saxons and irish. If memory serves me right Harold Hardrada of 1066 fame did a stint in the Varangians before returning to Britain via Norway to invade.

In response to the poor unfortunate who prefers opinion to fact, the plainest fact of all is that the Norse excelled at direct communication. One aspect of this is their runic alphabet. Scribes and scripts were fine for archival works, decrees and preserving manuscripts, but a simple type is the tool of immediate action. That applies as much today. Among my duties is typesetting, and I've used myriad styles of type over the past 30 years. Scripts are acceptable for fancy work, from invitations to awards, but plain type is the stuff of action and immediacy.

Getting back to gaming, while there has been a lot of discussion about the large battles, a big part of the fun of a Viking army is raiding and small battles.

This has an interesting impact on basing. The Medieval Warfare Rules, for example, has the figures mounted three to a stand for the earlier, raiding period, but four to a stand during the period of the "great armies." Warhammer Armies of Antiquity suggests using the Viking list for a raiding army, but the Saxon list for a later "great army."

For the gamer, this raises the question as to whether one mounts three to a stand or four to a stand, or whether one has an army of both. My solution is to mount individually (on metal bases) which allows me the freedom to select the number of figures on a (magnetic) stand or to have skirmish games.

A couple of months ago, one of the glossies had a nice 13th Warrior campaign. Another thread here talks about battles with Skraelings (which are best done as skirmishes). Plus there is always the Viking raid on a Saxon/Irish/Scot/French village. One might also do a siege of Constantinople type game. There is also the possibility of doing ship to ship battles as well.

pictors studio wrote:
Thats funny. In Norway they told me they were called Vikings after the viks (water inlets, pronounced to rhyme with nick, not ike) that they used to sail out of. Vik-ing.

That is almost correct. Vikings where so named, because they operated in the Viks (lying in wait), just as highwaymen take their name from their "workplace"!

By the way I forgot to mention: Vikings fought/raided each other more than anyone else, both as raiders (bloodfeuds or simple plundering) and later under more centralized states with real armies for the right of kingship. Please excuse me my english ;)

Zarquon - the 3- or 4-figure basing is a straight transfer from DBM, which is itself an annoying hangover from earlier WRG rules. The DBM list specifies most Vikings as "Fast Blades" until an arbitrary 830 AD date, thereafter a mix of "Ordinary" and "Inferior Blades". The Fast variety have 3 figures to a base, the others 4 figures to a shallower base. Army-sized actions would be mainly or entirely in the later period, of course.

Plenty of scope for major battles with Viking armies. I've recently taken on all sorts of Franks and Normans with mine.

--That is almost correct. Vikings where so named, because they operated in the Viks (lying in wait), just as highwaymen take their name from their "workplace"!--

"Vik" "Also Vik" "Also Also Vik"

MtM

John:

Don't even get me started on DBM, particularly the annoying nomenclature of "blades," "dudes with pointy sticks" and other DBM jargon. (I still get confused when I see AX in a dark ages list. I immediately think axe rather than auxilia.) IMHO, the jargon is one of the most irritating aspects of the rules. (In all fairness, Barker does encourage gamers to call their troops by their historically correct names rather than using jargon.)

The number of figures per stand probably does not make a lot of difference because the stands are representational. However, having two distinct basing schemes for one army (set of figures) is an unnecessary irritant. Do game designers really expect us to remount our figures between games? (And thanks for removing the blame from Terry Gore!)

The Viking army, in particular, is one of the reasons that I went back to individual basing after experimenting with element/stand basing. The Viking army really highlights one of the major downfalls of element/stand basing.

Calm down - I wasn't waving the red rag at you! I agree that the different basing is annoying, and I do wish Phil Barker hadn't perpetuated it in DBM. After using the early Vikings in a couple of competitions this year I'm rebasing them so I can field the Ragnarssons, Harald Hardrada, Sweyn Estridson and Thorkill the Tall (as an ally for Ethelred the Unready and Edmund Ironside). So far Sweyn and his English allies have beaten William the Conqueror in a friendly game...lots more to come.

Keep smiling.

I was not picking on Barker alone. A lot of game designers seem to commit the same sin.

Don't you hate rebasing? And if you are like me, a year from now you'll want to do early Vikings again.

Actually, I have enough Vikings that I could probably have armies based both ways. (After all, one cannot have too many Vikings). But I still have plans to do Stiklestad (sp), and would like to have the armies look alike.

Nyahahahah.

I am a heretic.

I run my three per base vikings out as both Bd(F) and Bd(O).

People who object at the club are made to wear saucepans!

Hi

When Merlin and I were staring up "Art Of War", we were gaming with different groups. I NEED to KILL at least once a week, and the groups I knew were gaming once a month. Hopeless, so I would switch between WRG 3ed and 4th, Chainmail and a couple home brew rules(moslty scrubie derived), and merlin was having a similar thing.
The solution for OUR games was to use frontage. Using our ground scale, and assuming a fig is actually a "platoon" analog 8 men deep, a 15mm frontage would be 50 inf, 20mm=64, 25=80 and 30=100. Similarly with cav. Then using treys that coverd the size required by whatever game we were playing.
In recent times, we havent been playing WRG or anything, but if, somehow it happened again, trays with double sided tape and so on would solve the problem.

R

3 or 4 on a base? Who cares? They're *representational*. If you have 3 figs on a base and I have 4 figs on a base, as long as the bases are the same size then why not simply agree the units are the same strength? Takes maybe five seconds for the exchange:

Player A: "Hmm. Our basing is slightly different. Oh, well, we'll just agree that your three-fig units are the equivalents of four figs."
Player B: "Sounds good to me. Sorry about the mix-up; I based 'em for an old rules set."
Player A: "Hey, no big deal. It's just a game. Your move first, general!"

Or maybe that's just too simple. :-)

Pictors, Anders, MtM,

Vik = inlet etc. The Oxford agrees. It also gives 'vik' as the etymological root of English place names that end with the modern 'wick' or 'wicke'.

So a 'wick' in a place name indicates a viking history.

The echoes of history that come down to us are fascinating.

I saw an episode of the wonderful British archeology program 'Meet the ancestors' a few months ago, which dug up the back yards of a row of shops in modern York (I think - I wish I'd paid more attention).

They found all sorts of small artifacts including a piece of amber jewellery. But what I found most fascinating was how they chose the site.

The terrace of shops each had a frontage of (as I recall) 12 foot and 6? inches. This was a Viking measure. The land plots had survived unchanged since they were divided up in the Dark ages, although rebuilt any number of times - indicating clearly that they were a site of Viking habitation.

That's where they dug and they were not wrong. The shop-keepers (who were all very supportive) were pretty surprised.

PS

Viking of course got very bad press. The image of totally uncivilised marauders with no real 'culture' comes to us through Christian monks.

While the cliche holds that the winners get to write history, in the case of the Vikings vs the Britons/Anglo Saxons etc, it was often a case of the LOSERS writing history. Because they were the ones who could write.

Yes, I know the whole 3 or 4 figures to a base thing is really picky. But it is about aesthetics. If we aren't concerned about aesthetics, we might as well be playing a board game.

There is a practical consequence of this. In some rules (Medieval Warfare) comes to mind, the whole 3 or 4 figures to a base does make a difference in terms of fighting and moving, etc. Now one can say, "these bases with three figures actually have four," and leave it to the opponent to try to remember which is which. However, there is an element of unfairness to this, particularly where an army has both 3 and 4 figures to a base. In some rules, the number of figures on the base give a quick means of determining a stand's abilities.