![]() All were closed due to the Reformation around the mid-sixteenth century. Five of the monasteries established in Iceland were short lived, while the other nine operated for centuries. Two of the monastic houses in Iceland and one in Norse Greenland were nunneries, whereas the others were monasteries. Fourteen monastic houses were established in Iceland and two in Norse Greenland during the Middle Ages. Research on activities in Iceland and Greenland shows that the transnational movement of monasticism reached these two countries as it reached other parts of Northern Europe. At the same time, it questions the supposed isolation of these societies from the rest of the Continent. On discovering it was not the Eternal City, the Vikings supposedly lost heart and embarked for the long voyage home.The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the medieval monastic houses operating in the northernmost dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church: Iceland and Norse Greenland. With the trap sprung, the “corpse” of Hastein sprang to life, killed the bishop, slew the people, and opened to his shipmates the gates of what they took to be Rome. the women came in throngs, soon to be led into exile.” The clergy came dressed in their vestments. The Bishop summons the people from throughout the city. After faking Hastein’s death, the Northmen sent several messengers to the city gates asking if their leader, who had converted to Christianity, could be buried in hallowed ground within the city walls: “Wailing is heard the clamour of deceitful grief. According to the main source for this story, the early 12th- century chronicler Dudo of Saint-Quentin, the Vikings mistook Luni, in its splendour, for Rome.įaced with Luni’s mighty fortifications, the Vikings relied, Dudo claimed, on trickery to get inside. Founded by the Romans, Luni had become prosperous during the Middle Ages and had a strong system of defences. ![]() The following year, 860, after a diversion up the Rhône River, the Viking expedition anchored off the coast of Italy, where the most colourful of the Viking exploits took place: the looting of Luni, near the modern Italian city of La Spezia. Despite how they are discussed today, these people did not call themselves Vikings-thought to mean “pirate” or “bay-dweller.” They most likely would not have seen themselves as a united people. In the following centuries, the people of Scandinavia used their longships to carry out lightning raids, as well as establish far-flung trade routes. In the late 700s farming communities in today’s Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were overpopulated, which fed the desire to expand and seize goods. ( Modern ideas of Vikings painted a homogenous picture until DNA showed a more diverse reality. He sent his boats south probably with the ultimate objective of sacking what must have seemed a tempting prize: Rome. According to the handful of sources available, it took the form of a remarkable, and audacious, raiding voyage led by a hell-raising naval commander, who brought terror to Muslim Spain, France, and Italy. Evidence of Viking settlements in England, Ireland, and Russia and their trade routes as far as present-day Istanbul and “Serkland” (the land of the Saracens, i.e., Baghdad) is plentiful the Vikings’ Mediterranean foray, however, is a more shadowy affair.
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