Lothar retained the title of emperor and a kingdom which included the two imperial towns of Rome and Aachen, but he had no authority over Louis's kingdom in Germany or Charles's kingdom in West Francia. On Lothar's death his 'Middle Kingdom' was itself split, and Louis and Charles began fighting for predominance. A new element was now added to this situation of dissolution and civil war: the Vikings.

The Vikings

The inhabitants of Scandinavia appear for the first time in our written sources when, suddenly, in the reign of Charlemagne, pirates crossed the North Sea to raid monasteries and settlements in north-west Europe. Scandinavians were not unknown in the west before this, as merchants. Indeed, the word 'Viking' may originally have meant traders, 'men who go to wics (trading places)'. Such men had brought furs, walrus ivory, amber, and slaves: all valuable items greatly in demand. Glass, pottery, metalwork, including swords, and coins all found their way in return back to the north, and have been discovered by archaeologists. In the eighth century the demand seems to have been greater than ever, and there is evidence that Scandinavian merchants were active in the eastern Baltic, collecting furs for the western market. This flourishing trade must have stimulated improvements in ship design: long ships fitted with a mast and capable of sailing right across the North Sea and far into the Atlantic were part of what made the whole Viking episode possible. It has been suggested that Scandinavian merchants went to Russia and brought vast quantities of silver from the Abbasid Empire in the east to Charlemagne's kingdom. This silver did much to finance Carolingian church-building, and to stimulate both the Carolingian and Scandinavian economies. The drying up of supplies of silver in the 820s and 830s caused by political troubles in the Abbasid Empire precipitated a crisis in the Carolingian Empire, and forced Scandinavians whose position had depended on the silver trade to turn to piracy. This hypothesis cannot as yet be proved, but it reminds us that the growth of the Carolingian Empire, the most power-

-99-