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Norse activity in the British Isles occurred during the Early Mediaeval period when members of the Norse populations of Scandinavia travelled to Britain and Ireland to trade, settle or raid. The Norse peoples who came to the British Isles have often been called Vikings;〔Keynes 1999. p. 460.〕〔Richards 1991. p. 9.〕 although it is a matter of debate as to whether the term ''Vikings'' should be used to represent all the Norse settlers or just those who raided.〔Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 3.〕 At the start of the Early Mediaeval period, the Norse kingdoms of Scandinavia had developed trade links which stretched across southern Europe and the Mediterranean, giving them access to imports such as gold. These trade links also extended westward into Ireland and the British Isles.〔Blair 2003. pp. 56–57.〕 In the final decade of the 8th century AD, Norse raiders attacked a series of Christian monasteries located in what is now the United Kingdom. This started in 793, with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne off of England's east coast. The following year they sacked the nearby Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey, and in 795 they attacked again, this time raiding Iona Abbey on Scotland's west coast.〔Blair 2003. p. 55.〕 ==Background== During the Early Medieval period, Ireland and Britain were culturally, linguistically and religiously divided into various peoples. The languages of the Celtic Britons and Gaels were descended from the Celtic languages spoken by those of Iron Age Europe. In Ireland, parts of western Scotland, as well as the Isle of Man, people were speaking an early form of Gaelic known as Old Irish. There may have been another pre-Indo-European language spoken by the Erainn up until the 8th century in what is today Kerry, but this is likely to have been Celtic or some other Indo-European language. In Western Britain, which includes; Cornwall, Cumbria, Wales, and Southwest Scotland, the Celtic Brythonic languages were spoken, with modern descendants such as Welsh and Cornish still being used. In Northern Britain, past the Forth and Clyde rivers which constitutes a large portion of modern day Scotland, dwelled the Picts who spoke the Pictish language. Due to the scarcity of scripture in Pictish, all of which can be found in Ogham, views are conflicted as to whether Pictish was Celtic like the southernly languages, or perhaps even a non-Indo-European language like Basque. However, most inscriptions and place names hint towards the Picts being Celtic in language and culture. Most peoples of Britain and Ireland had already predominantly converted to Christianity from their older, pre-Christian polytheistic religions. In contrast to the rest of the isles though, much of southern Britain was considered to be part of Anglo-Saxon England, where Anglo-Saxon migrants from continental Europe had settled during the 5th century CE, bringing with them their own Germanic language (known as Old English), a polytheistic religion (Anglo-Saxon paganism) and their own distinct cultural practices. By the time of the Viking incursions though, Anglo-Saxon England had too become mostly Christian. The Isle of Man had supported its own agrarian population, but it is widely believed that it was Brythonic-speaking before Old Irish (later to become Manx) spread there. Gaelicisation could have taken place before the Viking age or perhaps during it, when the area was settled by Norse-Gaels who practised their own culture. In northern Britain, in the area roughly the same of modern day Scotland, lived three distinct ethnic groups in their own respective kingdoms; the Picts, Scots and Britons.〔Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 5.〕 The Pictish cultural group dominated the majority of Scotland, with major populations concentrated between the Firth of Forth and the River Dee, as well as in Sutherland, Caithness, and Orkney.〔Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. pp. 5–7.〕 The Scots were, according to written sources, a tribal group which had crossed to Britain from Dalriada in the north of Ireland during the late 5th century. Archaeologists have not been able to identify anything that was unique to the kingdom of the Scots, noting similarities with the Picts in most forms of material culture.〔Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. pp. 14–16.〕 The Britons were those dwelling in the Old North, in parts of what have become southern Scotland and northern England, and by the 7th or 8th centuries, had apparently come under the political control of the Anglo-Saxons.〔Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 18.〕 By the mid-9th century, Anglo-Saxon England was divided into four separate and independent kingdoms; East Anglia, Wessex, Northumbria, and Mercia, the latter of which was the strongest military power.〔Richards 1991. p. 13.〕 Between half a million and a million people lived in England at this time, with society being rigidly hierarchical. This class system had a king and his ealdormen at the top, under whom were the thegns, or landholders, and then the various forms of agricultural workers below them. Beneath all of these was a class of slaves, who may have made up as much as a quarter of the population.〔 The majority of the populace lived in the countryside, although a few large towns had developed, namely London and York, which were centres of royal and ecclesiastical administration. There was also a number of trading ports, such as Hamwic and Ipswich, where foreigne trade took place .〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Norse activity in the British Isles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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