The Norsemen were the Germanic peoples who inhabited Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. They spoke Norse, which was a Classical language of the North Germanic branch that evolved from Proto-Germanic during the early centuries AD. Living in distant proximity from Rome, the Norsemen practiced their pagan religion longer than any of their related Germanic peoples.

Developing great skills in craft, trade and warfare by the Middle Ages, the Norsemen expanded throughout a vast area during the Viking age. These expansions resulted in the discovery of Iceland, Greenland and North America, and the conquest of parts of Britain, Ireland and France. In the east, Norse Vikings originally known as the Rus established the first Russian state to control the lucrative trade routes from the Baltic sea to Arabia and the Constantinople. In addition, the Norsemen wrote several literary works, like the Eddas and the Sagas, which have given scholars valuable insight into the history and culture of the early Germanic peoples.

With the Christianisation of Scandinavia and the emergence of the Hanseatic league, the Norse way of life changed, and the modern descendants of the Norsemen are today referred to as the Scandinavians.

Etymology

The term "Norsemen" simply meaning "people from the North", was orignally applied by the Anglo-Saxons for the Germanic peoples originating from southern and central Scandinavia.

History

Origins

Most Germanic tribal societies in Scandinavia were remarkably stable from the Neolithic period when farming first arrived in 4000 B.C.E. until the first centuries C.E. and consisted largely of isolated village economies. Change began during the first half of the first millennium C.E. under the influence of the Roman Empire. After their wars of conquest were largely over and their empire’s borders had become relatively fixed, the Romans turned to trade with peoples outside occupied lands in order to supply the large number of slaves needed to keep their economy going. Probably as a result of trade in slaves and in iron, leather, and amber, a prestige goods economy began to flourish in Scandinavia with artifacts of gold and silver, attested by rich burials that began in the first century C.E.

Archaeologists have determined concentric zones of differing burial types among the early Norsemen, determined by their distance from the Roman frontier. Most of present-day Denmark lay within the zone of rich burials, where people prospered by trade with the Romans. To the north in Norway, Sweden and east along the Baltic coast was a zone of warrior burials containing fewer prestige items. The warriors of this zone may have provided captive slaves to the "middlemen" of Denmark. The presence of such wealth in Denmark must have provoked raids from the more northern peoples.

Danes and Swedes had begun a trade between the east and west of Europe, from as early as the first century C.E. This trade which consisted in part of acting as middlemen in a slave trade between the Balts, Slavs and Finns along the Baltic coast to the east and the Roman Empire. This was supplemented by trade in iron and finely crafted metal goods wrought by Scandinavian smiths. Craftspeople also worked on leather and amber.

By the third century there is evidence of the disruption of trade, probably by pirate attacks from the warrior periphery. By the fourth and fifth centuries substantial settlements of longhouses organized along street grids were being built in Denmark, indicating the presence of a centralized political power. At the same time small strongholds, many consisting of a single fortified wall, were scattered across southern Sweden, a sign of the need to defend against attacks. Votive deposits in bogs have been found from this period, many of them of elaborate weaponry, suggesting the presence of a warrior elite.

By the fifth century trading centers in southern Sweden and on the island of Gotland were engaged in a rich commerce with peoples to the east who were receiving subsidies from Byzantine Rome. Gold coins streamed to southern Scandinavia to be turned into ornaments by the increasingly sophisticated metalworkers. In the fifth century the ruling dynasty of the Swedes, the dominant tribe of southern Sweden, was founded. But an independent warrior elite continued to be a factor in the sixth and seventh centuries, as indicated by elaborate burials of whole ships with richly ornamented swords and other battle gear.

The work Getica, written in Constantinople around 551 AD by the Roman historian Jordanes, gives a unqie glimpse into the Germanic tribes of Scandinavia in the 6th century. Jordanes names a multitude of tribes living in Scandza, which he named the ''Womb of nations'', and says Scandinavians were even larger and more ferocious than other Germans. Among others, Jordanes mentions the Swedes, like Tacitus in his 1th century work Germania. The Swedes were noted for their strong fleets and armies. The Danes were of the same stock, and these tribes were the "tallest of men". In Norway, Jordanes mentions remaining Rugi, who had participated at the Battle of Nedao and Odoacer's conquest of the Italy. In all probability, these tribes still had contact with their kinsmen throughout Europe. The Heruli and the Goths, who launched naval expeditions in the Black Sea against the Roman Empire for centuries, probably brought naval technology back to Scandinavia. The Nydam boat, the oldest clinker-built boat ever found, indicates that the early Norsemen posessed advanced shipbuilding techniques already in the 3th century.

Expansion

Causes of the Viking expansion

The tension between increasingly centralized groups and independent warrior societies may have furnished part of the impetus behind the Viking raids and the Scandinavian migrations to other parts of Europe that began in the late eighth century, as warriors sought to expand their territorial holdings and were unable to do so in neighboring lands. Although the main bases for Scandinavian economy were farming and trade, Scandinavians had social and political organization in which warfare played a central role, similar to that of ancient Celts and to that of other Germanic peoples. The spoils of war were desired at least as much as proof of warrior prowess and bravery as for material gain. Launching raids to distant lands was also way to build political power. The advanced clinker-built longships used by the Norsemen were uniquely suited to both deep and shallow waters, extending the reach of the Norse raiders, traders and settlers along coastlines and along the major river valleys of the world.

Rapid population growth is thought to be another cause of Viking expansion. There is archaeological evidence of increasing populations on Scandinavian farmsteads during this period. The use of iron tools, more durable than bronze ones, led to more efficient farming and the ability to support larger communities in a given region. Polygamy was also widely practised among the Norsemen, with chieftains often having a large number of wives. The favorable climate of what is known as the Medieval Warm Period probably also contributed to population growth in Scandinavia.

At the dawn of the Viking Age in the eighth century, Scandinavia, as it had been earlier, was a crossroads of trade. Norse merchants were active in the eastern Baltic, collecting furs from Finnic peoples who had trapped them for export west to the European superpower of the day, the Carolingian Empire of the Germanic Franks under Karl the Great. As Norse merchants penetrated into Eastern Europe and beyond, they tapped into a trade network transporting vast amounts of silver from the Abbasid Empire. The merchants may have acted as a pipeline to carry this silver to Karl the Great's Frankish Empire, where it stimulated the economy and helped finance his church-building enterprise. Political troubles in the Abbasid Empire dried up the flow of silver in the 820s and 830s, a possible reason that Norse silver traders turned to piracy and raiding. Traders’ tales of the great wealth of the Carolingians, the most powerful group in Europe since the Romans, no doubt also encouraged raids for plunder. The brutal campaign the Carolingians waged against the pagan Germanic Saxons of northern Germany in the latter eighth century may have also led to a call to arms against foreigners.

The era of Great Raids

The period of frequent Viking raids on settlements throughout Europe began at the end of the eighth century and lasted into the 11th century. The earliest recorded Viking raids were directed against the British Isles in the 790s, with others against the Frankish kingdom on the mainland soon afterward. But raiding may have been unrecorded long before that time, as raids seem to have disrupted Danish trade with the Romans already in the third century. The early 4th century Nydam boat, which is the earliest clinker-built boat found, proves that the contemporary Germanic tribes posessed advanced shipbuilding technology. As soon as lucrative trade networks appeared along the Baltic and the North sea, raiders from among the Norse warrior class sprang into action to take advantage of them. The relationship of Viking raiding to Viking trading was probably a power struggle to control lucrative trade routes.

British isles

The earliest date given for a Viking raid on the British Isles is 787 AD when, according to the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'', a group of men from Norway sailed to the Isle of Portland in Dorset. There, they were mistaken for merchants by a royal official. They murdered him when he tried to get them to accompany him to the king's manor to pay a trading tax on their goods. On June 8, 793, a monastery on Lindisfarne, an island off the coast of Northumbria, was sacked by the Norsemen. Trade between the England and the Continent along the English Channel and the North Sea had been expanding throughout the eighth century, becoming a great temptation to pirates. Raids in this area became more frequent as well as more penetrating after the 830s. In 867 the Danes captured York, and by 870 the Earldom of Orkney was established. In about 880 the Viking leader Guthrum signed a treaty with Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great, granting Guthrum rule over a large area of East Anglia, called the Danelaw.

The territories the Vikings conquered in Ireland, first in 795, were small but strategically placed. The modern Irish cities of Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Arklow, Cork and Limerick were all founded by the Norsemen. The Viking Age, through trade, introduced great wealth to the kingdoms as well as an increased means of communication, as always an effective power of change in a society. Ireland had closer contact with Great Britain and the European mainland, which created new influences in the political system as well as in the church and the commercial aspects of the society. The native Irish defended themselves strenuously against the Vikings, mostly Norwegians, and in 902 temporarily expelled them from the site of presentday Dublin. But the Vikings became so well established there that they began launching raids against England. In 1014 Danes under Sweyn Forkbeard conquered a large territory in England. In the 12th century, the Vikings lost their influence when their cities fell to the Normans, another Viking-descended people, who had been invited to Ireland as allies of a rival claimant to the Irish Crown in the 11th century.

France and Germany

The Royal Frankish Annals, or Annales regni Francorum, an anonymous account of the political and military history of the Franks from 741 to 829, record the first raid in Frankish lands as taking place in 799. The city of Rouen was attacked in 841. The first area to experience the Viking raids in all their intensity was the Seine basin, first during the attack on St. Wandrill in 841. The first attack on Paris occurred in 845. The second region to feel the impact of the Vikings was Aquitaine. The raiders went as far as Spain in 844 and Bordeaux was under Viking influence by 848. The third zone of activity was Brittany and Neustria from the 840s; Brittany was finally conquered in 914. The fourth zone of activity was the Meuse–Lower Rhine area. In 845 both Hamburg and Paris were sacked. The Vikings repeatedly sailed up Frankish rivers, looting and burning. The raids caused severe disruption of Frankish commerce and society, threatening to plunge the area back into a condition like that of the medieval period that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire.

The design of Viking ships which allowed them to travel up shallow rivers far inland, enabled them to make surprise raids on inland strongholds and settlements that had experienced only assault by slowly approaching land armies. Typically, mounting several hit-and-run style raids the Vikings would establish staging areas near the mouth of rivers from which to launch raids further inland. These would also serve at times as camps where they could wait out the winter when the stormy seas became impassable. In the ninth century the war bands had begun to increase in size to the scale of armies, the result of attempts in Scandinavia of kings such as Harald Fairhair of Norway to consolidate political power. More elaborate defensive structures were being built in Scandinavia, such as the Danevirke finished by the Danish king Gudfred in 804, which protected the southern border of Denmark. A new phase of attacks started in 885 on Paris and its surroundings.

Organized defense against the Vikings awaited the emergence of strong leaders such as Charles the Bald of the Franks and Alfred the Great of the Anglo-Saxons, who were able to organize the fortification of towns, station fleets, and naval patrols along the coasts and to marshal more mobile military forces. Other Christian leaders could do no more than to pay ransom, called Danegeld. In 845 the first danegeld was paid to Vikings by the Franks. In return for sufficient ransom, as well as in the presence of a strong army, the Vikings were often willing to declare peace and begin trading.

The might of the Carolingian Empire prevented Viking settlement on the scale of that in the British Isles, and raids on the mainland occurred only sporadically. The exception was the area around the mouth of the river Seine, where the staging areas for attacks farther upriver became the basis for the Duchy of Normandy, granted to a Norwegian Viking chief with Danish followers named Rollo, in 911 by the Carolingian king Charles the Simple. In return, Rollo swore fealty to Charles, converted to Roman Catholicism, and undertook to defend the northern region of Francia against the incursions of other Viking groups. Rollo is considered the founder of Normandy. The Normans, who were the descendants of Rollo and his followers, would later expand to acquire territories in Southern Italy, Malta the British Isles, Cyprus and the Asia minor.

Through the strait of Gibraltar

From their new staging areas or homes on the British Isles and the coastal mainland, the Norsemen launched naval expeditions farther south. In about 858 Björn Ironside, the son of a Danish king, and his lieutenant, Hastein, led a fleet of 62 longships in raids from the mouth of the Loire River in France along the Iberian Peninsula through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea, where they reached coastal North Africa, the Balearic Islands off Spain, and coastal southern Francia. A fleet of Moors eventually drove them back to the Atlantic, and they returned to France four years after departure, and later returned to Scandinavia as rich men.

The Faeroe Islands

The Norse Vikings were not only raiders but settlers, who engaged in the first great era of overseas expansion in the history of Europe. Their colonization in the 860s of the Faroese Islands, 300 miles to the west of the coast of Norway, was the first step in this expansion. It is thought that the Vikings learned much about the waters to the west from Irish monks, who had pioneered navigation there in the seventh century. Accounts of the earliest Viking voyages to the Faeroes and Iceland say nothing about their “discovery,” suggesting that this was already a accomplished by the Irish. That the early voyages of the Vikings to Iceland took them directly to the southwest coast, where the Irish monks were settled, seems to imply that they were following the sea route pioneered and plied by the Irish. The Vikings’ large-scale settlement of the Faeroes, involving transportation of families, gear, and animals across 300 miles of open water, began a period of wide-ranging Viking navigation.

Iceland

Iceland was discovered by Naddoddr, one of the first settlers on the Faroe Islands, who was sailing from Norway to the Faroe Islands, but got lost and drifted to the east coast of Iceland. Naddoddr named the country ''Snæland'' (Snowland). Swedish sailor Gardar Svavarsson also accidentally drifted to the coast of Iceland. He discovered that the country was an island and named it ''Garðarshólmi'' (literally ''Garðar's Islet'') and stayed for the winter at Húsavík. The first Scandinavian who deliberately sailed to ''Garðarshólmi'' was Flóki Vilgerðarson, also known as Hrafna-Flóki (Raven-Flóki). Flóki settled for one winter at Barðaströnd. It was a cold winter, and when he spotted some drift ice in the fjords he gave the island its current name, ''Ísland'' (Iceland). The first permanent settler in Iceland is usually considered to have been a Norwegian chieftain named Ingólfur Arnarson. According to the story, he threw two carved pillars overboard as he neared land, vowing to settle wherever they landed. He then sailed along the coast until the pillars were found in the southwestern peninsula, now known as Reykjanesskagi. There he settled with his family around 874, in a place he named Reykjavík (Bay of Smokes) due to the geothermal steam rising from the earth. It is recognized, however, that Ingólfur Arnarson may not have been the first one to settle permanently in Iceland — that may have been Náttfari, a slave of Garðar Svavarsson who stayed behind when his master returned to Scandinavia. This newly settled land offered plentiful opportunities for farming and hunting. By the final decade of the ninth century immigrants were voyaging to Iceland in great numbers, mostly from coastal Norway; and many from Ireland and the Scottish Isles. The conversion to Christianity took place in Iceland about the year 1000, when King Olaf Tryggvason sent out missionaries to convert the Icelanders. Many of the immigrants were Viking chieftains; written accounts mention such names as Naddod the Viking, Raven-Floki, and Geirmund the Noisy. Many chieftains immigrated as a direct result of Harold I Fairhair’s campaigns during the 880s to unite Norway under his rule, in particular his decisive naval victory in about 890 at Hafrsfjörd. He then took a fleet across the North Sea to the Scottish Isles to expel his enemies there; these refugees also made their way to Iceland. Many of them remained in Iceland only during the winter months and returned in the summer to the coast of Norway to conduct raids. Other chiefs who had been Harold’s allies also emigrated on the king’s advice. Many of the freedmen and slaves who migrated to Iceland were Gaelic, and some of the chieftains were of mixed Norse and Gaelic stock. In 930 the Vikings established a thing, the Althing, which is the oldest surviving democratic institution in the world.

Greenland

Two areas along Greenland's southwest coast were colonized by Norse settlers around 986. The land was at best marginal for Norse pastoral farming. The settlers arrived during a warm phase, when short-season crops such as rye and barley could be grown. Sheep and hardy cattle were also raised for food, wool, and hides. Their main export was walrus ivory, which was traded for iron and other goods which could not be produced locally. Greenland became a dependency of the king of Norway in 1261. During the 13th century, the population may have reached as high as 5,000, divided between the two main settlements of ''Eystribygð'' (Eastern Settlement) and ''Vestribygð'' (Western Settlement). The organization of these settlements revolved mainly around religion, and they consisted of around 250 farms, which were split into approximately fourteen communities that were centered around fourteen churches, one of which was a cathedral at Gardar. The Catholic diocese of Greenland was subject to the archdiocese of Nidaros. However, many bishops chose to exercise this office from afar. As the years wore on, the climate shifted (see Little Ice Age). In 1379 the northernmost settlement was attacked by the Skrælings (Norse word for Inuit). Crops failed and trade declined. The Greenland colony gradually faded away. By 1450 it had lost contact with Norway and Iceland and disappeared from all but a few Scandinavian legends.

Americas

A Norwegian ship's captain named Bjarni Herjólfsson first came across a part of the North American continent ca. 985 when he was blown off course sailing to Greenland from Iceland. Subsequent expeditions from Greenland (some led by Leif Erikson) explored the areas to the west, seeking large timbers for building in particular (Greenland had only small trees and brush). Regular activity from Greenland extended to Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island for hunting and trading with Inuit groups. A short-lived seasonal settlement was established at L'Anse aux Meadows, located in the northern part of Newfoundland, Canada. The Greenlanders called the new found territory ''Vinland''. It is unclear whether ''Vinland'' referred to in the traditionally thinking as Vínland (wine-land) or more recently as Vinland (meadow- or pasture-land). In any case, without any official backing, attempts at colonization by the Norse proved failures. There were simply too many natives for the Greenlanders to conquer or withstand and they withdrew to Greenland.

Eastern Europe

The Norse Vikings who went eastwards (austrviking) were mostly of Swedish origin, primarily descended from a tribe called the Svear who lived in central southern Sweden, but also from the Norwegians and the Danes. A common name for these Vikings was Rus. The name Rus is related to the word Ruotsi, which means “Sweden” in Finnish, derived from from Roþrslandi, old name of Roslagen "the land of rowing," which was the name for the lands of the Svear on the Baltic coast. Due to the Swedish influence in the region, Russia was even referred to as Svíþjóð hin mikla ("Great Sweden") and Svíþjóð hin kalda, ("Cold Sweden") by Snorri Sturluson in the Norse Sagas.

Seeking to expand their trading links the Swedish traders sailed east along the Baltic coast to the Neva River and followed its course farther and farther eastward, founding settlements from which they launched expeditions south into Russia. An important Viking route to the south was through the city Staraja Ladoga on the river Volchov. From a trading station there known as Aldeigjuborg the Vikings made their way to Novgorod, which they called Holmgård. Hoards of 8th century Baghdad minted silver coins and Byzantine gold found in the soils around Birka, a large trading settlement in Lake Mälaren, Sweden, suggests that Russia was mainly a waystation on the route to the riches of the Byzantine and the Arab world. However, only a few Vikings actually traveled all the way to Baghdad; rather they focused on opening up trade routes through Russia and maintaining control over them, by force if necessary. The Vikings controlled the Trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, leading to Constantinople, and the Volga trade route, connecting Scandinavia with the Abbasid caliphate and Tang China. Similliar to how they earlier had acquired Byzantine gold coins, the Vikings collected tribute from local tribesmen in the form of slaves and furs, which they exchanged for valuable Arab silver. In addition to traiding, the Vikings launched several raids against the Byzantine empire and military expeditions to the Caspian sea.

The Muslim diplomat and traveller, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who visited Volga Bulgaria in 922, described the Viking Rus (''Rusiyyah'') after encountering them near the Volga:

}} An important source for the history of the Vikings in Russia is the Primary Russian Chronicle, written by a Kievan monk called Nestor who lived 11th–12th centuries. According to Nestor, the Vikings were asked to send a king to establish justice among the local Finns and Slavs. Rurik, a leader from a Norse group known as the Rus, agreed to rule, and brought with him his kinsmen who subsequently gave their name to the land of Russia. His dynasty, would rule most of Russia up to the 16th century. Though Nestor’s story is considered partly apocryphal its kernel of truth consists of the Vikings’ domination of the trading routes through Eastern Europe. The trading networks of the Norsemen unified the region that would become modern Russia. Initially through an early patchwork of cities and later through the state of the Rus centered around Kiev. During the Viking Age, Kiev was waystation to Constantinople, the largest and richest city in Europe at the time.

As the Romans had before them, the Byzantines recruited Germanic warriors to protect their Emperor. The tradition employing Germanics for this purpose went back to the early days of Rome. To double-insure his own personal safety and that of imperial family members, Emperor Augustus established a small personal guard called the ''Germani corporis custodes'' ("German bodyguard unit"). Probably of cohort-strength, these were warriors recruited from Germanic peoples on the lower Rhine who answered to the emperor alone. Having earlier formed the elite Optimatoi unit composed of Goths, some among the Rus Vikings were in the 10th century similarly invited to form the Varangian Guard. The Varangian Guard was initially composed of at least 6,000 men who served as a personal guard of the Byzantine emperor, in addition to forming the elite forces of the Byzantine Army. One of the duties of the Varangians was to guard the Byzantine emperor during the elaborate religious services that took place in the majestic Hagia Sophia cathedral, where they left numerous several runic markings. The Varangians were by far the best paid soldiers of the Byzantine army, and during the Fourth Crusade, the only section of Constantinople that was not overrun by the Crusaders was the section of the city protected by the Varangian Guard.

End of the Viking Expansion

The trend in Scandinavia toward consolidation of power and land in a few hands that had forced Norse raiders abroad in the ninth century began to confront the Vikings in the lands they attacked during the latter part of the Viking age. In the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Alfred the Great and in Ireland and Francia, they met an increasingly determined resistance. The Viking raids are thought to have been a primary motivating force in the development of feudalism, as the need to maintain armies of highly skilled and heavily armed soldiers caused rulers to engage in an exchange of lands for service with followers called vassals. The Normans, descended from Vikings, were in the forefront of this development, quelling indiscriminate raiding by their subjects as strenuously as they had themselves once raided. In the Scandinavian homeland during the 11th century royal power was growing, as evidenced by the many new trading centers that were built. Almost all of these new towns still exist as important centers: in Norway, Trondheim, Bergen, and Oslo; in Sweden, Sigtuna, Lund, and Skara; in Denmark, Aalborg, Odense, and Roskilde, among others. Some of these new towns were the seats of Bishops and Royalty, symbols of a new age. At the same time the readiness of former Vikings in new lands to adopt Christianity, though at first in a blend with paganism, and new customs and language meant that the characteristic Viking way of life would not long endure. The Viking Age is considered to have ended by around 1050, the year when the earliest extant Danish crucifix was made, although in some parts of Scandinavia and in Viking colonies, particularly Scotland and Iceland, Viking culture and influences persisted longer.

Culture

Society

The Norsemen manifested a strong sense of community, with strong kinship ties forming the basis of the Norse clans who were part of an extended family called Sippe, composed of about 50 households. The Norsemen demonstrated a sense of social organization in warfare, mining, boat building, and navigation, which allowed relatively small groups of people to travel great distances through the wilderness and hostile territory to trade or make highly successful attacks.

With agriculture kingship central to early Norse way of life, social standing was partly determined by land ownership and family-relations. However, the emphasis shifted gradually from a community based on kinship to a hierarchical system of fealty between persons of greater and lesser wealth and power, with the loyalty to kings and nobles down to lesser chieftains and their warriors becoming an increasingly important binding force in society. Power tended to concentrate in the hands of a few as successful Drottins (warlords, who with their Hird (retinue) exerted influence based on the size of their entourage and their ability to acquire booty. As chieftains emerged from among warriors, and kings emerged from the chieftains, the tendency was for the most powerful to preserve power by minimizing warfare and establishing means of achieving social stability. Constant threats to stability were the individual freedom of all members of the warrior class and the ability of any warrior of whatever status to attract followers if he was successful in war. The three general classes among the Norsemen were the chieftains, freemen, and the thralls. The thralls were usually prisoners of war, who lived in their own houses and worked as farmers but were required to provide certain amounts of foodstuffs, cattle, and textiles to their masters, making them more like serfs than slaves. Thee freemen each ruled their own estate and were subject to the king directly, without any intermediate hierarchy as in later feudalism. Free men without landed property could swear fealty to a man of property who as their lord would then be responsible for their upkeep, and to provide generous gifts, and symbels in the mead hall of the chieftain. Recreational activities included Tafl games and Kubb. As a token to his master, a freedman would serve as housecarl in the hird (retinue) of his lord. This system of sworn retainers was central to Norse society, and the loyalty of the retainer to his lord was taken to replace his family ties. Professions, such as religious leaders, healers, merchants and craftsmen were not class-based. Norse society was highly patriarchal, fathers had absolute authority over the family, which could include more than one wife. Nevertheless, Women had considerable influence and independence for the age, as indicated by the fact that they commissioned a great number of rune stones to memorialize the dead. They also reportedly could declare divorce from their husbands.

Government

Norse monarchy was elective; the king was elected by the free men from among eligible candidates of a family tracing their ancestry to the tribe's divine or semi-divine founder. To make public decisions Norsemen met in a council known as the Thing. Leaders and freemen met at a Thingstead, a sacred or historic place, to hear opinions and grievances, vote on leaders, settle disputes, banish wrongdoers, and determine policy and strategy. The Icelandic Althing, founded in 930 as the Þingvellir, is the oldest existant democratic institution in the world.

In the case of a suspected crime, the accused could avoid punishment by presenting a fixed number of free men (their number depending on the severity of the crime) prepared to swear an oath on his innocence. Failing this, he could prove his innocence in a trial by combat called Holmgang. Corporal or capital punishment for free men does not figure in the Norse law codes, and banishment appears to be the most severe penalty issued officially. This reflects that Germanic tribal law did not have the scope of exacting revenge, which was left to the judgement of the family of the victim, but to settle damages as fairly as possible once an involved party decided to bring a dispute before the assembly.

Language

The Norsemen spoke Norse a North Germanic language. The changing processes that distinguish Old Norse from its older form, Proto-Norse, were mostly concluded around the 8th century, and another transitional period that led up to the modern descendants of Old Norse (''i.e.,'' the modern North Germanic languages) started in the mid- to late 14th century, thereby ending the language phase known as Old Norse. The first major dialectal distinctions in the language arose in the ''Old East Norse'', ''Old West Norse'', and ''Old Gutnish'' dialects. No clear geographical boundary exists between the Eastern and Western dialects. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden. Most speakers of Old Norse dialects spoke the ''Old East Norse'' dialect originating in what are present-day Denmark and Sweden. ''Old Gutnish,'' the more obscure dialectal branch, is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations. It shares traits with both Old West Norse and Old East Norse but had also developed on its own.

Old Icelandic was essentially identical to Old Norwegian, and together they formed the Old West Norse dialect of Old Norse and were also spoken in settlements in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Norwegian settlements in Normandy. The Old East Norse dialect was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, settlements in Russia, England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language, ranging from Vinland in the West to the Volga in the East. In Russia, it survived the longest in Novgorod, probably lasting into the 13th century there. The age of the Swedish language's presence in Finland is strongly contested (see Swedish-speaking Finns), but by the time of the Second Swedish Crusade in the 13th century, Swedish settlement spread the language into the region.

Litterature

Inscriptions made by the Norsemen on runestones provide glimpses of historical events, but writing played nothing like the important role that it had among Christian Europeans. Only after the they adopted Christianity and the Latin alphabet did they begin to write their sagas, which are rich sources of information. The oldest Viking poems from from about 850 and are known because later Viking poets such as Snorri Sturluson recorded them. Since the Runic alphabetwas not used for literary writing, early Norse poetry was transmitted orally by the Skalds, who ejoyed high social status. After the advent of Christianity the Norsemen began to create literature written in Latin, from around the 12th century. Most of the manuscripts however date from the 13th and 14th centuries.

Old Norse poetry, as is all ancient Germanic poetry, is alliterative; that is, it uses series of words that begin with the same consonant. It differs from Old English and Old High German poetry in being strophic, rather than being written in an epic long line. The oldest and most important monument of Old Norse poetry are the Prose, and the Poetic Edda. The meaning or derivation of the word Edda is not known, though there are several theories, one that it is from the word for great-grandmother, possibly a reference to the source of old tales. From this original meaning it may have evolved to refer simply to poetics. The Poetic Edda is a collection of tales from mythology and a series of heroic lays (narrative poems) written by an anonymous author around 1250.

Another style of Viking poetry is that of the skalds, poets who composed works in praise of kings and great warriors. Whereas the Eddic poems are anonymous, the authors of Skaldic poems are named. Skaldic poetry was essentially an art of royal courts, in the latter part of the Viking Age, when kings grew increasingly powerful, whereas the Eddic poems are rooted in the simpler societies of the past. Whereas the Eddic poems are relatively straightforward and natural, the Skaldic poems are extremely artificial in structure and language, employing alliteration and assonance, as well as making elaborate use of such rhetorical devices as heiti and kenningar (metaphors and figurative paraphrases). The most pretentious style of Skaldic poem was the drapa (literally, fall of men).

In addition, the Icelanders created the literary form known as the saga, prose narratives of historical events, especially biographies of prominent individuals. Sagas enrich and enliven objective description with dialogue and poetic citations, as do Old Irish prose narratives. Because many of the first settlers of Iceland were of mixed Viking and Irish stock, direct influence in the establishment of the saga tradition is possible. The sagas are a rich source of information about the settlement of Iceland and Greenland and the Viking voyages to North America, for example, Groenlendinga (or the Saga of the Greenlanders) and the Eiriks saga (or the Saga of Eric the Red). Though these stories had been passed down by word of mouth for centuries before they were written, archeological finds have confirmed the authencity of the voyages described.

Religion

The Germanic peoples, including the Viking Norse, seem to have shared a pantheon of gods which changed over time. Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda gives a rich and detailed account of Norse mythology and gods as they existed just before paganism slowly yielded to Christianity. The existence of the Vanir, an older group of agrarian gods, who had been usurped of much of their power by the newer and more warlike Aesir, gives the sense that Germanic religion evolved over time. The Norse during the Viking Age entered fully into the worship of the Aesir, who may have emerged in reaction to the wars of the migration period during the first millennium C.E. The Vikings sacrificed to Odin in time of war, Thor in times of famine or plague, and Frey before wedding celebrations and possibly at funerals. The Norsemen believed that warriors who died an heroic death were carried by Valkyeries to Valhalla, located in Asgard, the realm of Odin. In Valhalla they would then fight battles during the day in preparation for the battle of Ragnarok (Doom of the Gods) and feast at night on boar meat and mead, an alcoholic drink made from honey. Those warriors who did not die in battle supposedly rotted in the cold north.

Both cremation and inhumation were practiced during the Viking Age. The death of the god Balder, as recorded by Snorri Sturluson, was followed by a boat funeral for a god. A pyre was built around the body of Balder and his wife, Nanna. Then many treasures were placed into the boat—buckles, brooches, rings, clasps, and pins. There were not only treasure but implements of ordinary life such as knives, buckets, and scissors. Odin, Balder’s father, stood vigil over him for a time, then took off his magic gold arm ring, Draupnir, and slipped it onto Balder’s arm. After leaving the ship Odin gave the order to set it alight and it was released to drift out over the water as the mourners wept and recalled Balder’s deeds.

The conversion of the Norsemen to Christianity was a slow process in their Scandinavian homeland, although abroad in England, it was quick enough that few clearly pagan burials have been found. As with Guthrum in the Danelaw, kings often led the way; the Danish king Harald Bluetooth claimed on a runestone monument erected around 960 to have Christianized the Danes. A runestone in Norway of the 1020s, covered with Christian symbols, documents the acceptance of the new faith there. At the end of the 10th century coins with Christian symbols were issued in the Scandinavian countries. However, there is evidence that initially the Norsemen considered Christ to be simply a new god to add to their pantheon. A character in Norse literature, Helgi the Thin, believed in God but prayed to Thor when there was a storm at sea. Graves often contain a mixture of pagan and Christian elements. A cross in Yorkshire, England, depicts the mythic hero Sigurd the Dragon Slayer wearing a bishop’s ring while a priest below him celebrates the Eucharist. Among rural folk in Scandinavia, the Orkney Islands, and Iceland, belief in many Viking mythic figures continued to the end of the 19th century. Even today in Iceland roads are not built in certain areas lest they disturb local earth spirits.

Military practises

During the first years of raiding the war bands of the Norsemen were small, often carried by a single ship, rather than royal expeditions or large invasions. Vikings were mostly foot soldiers because their horses were small (the result of inbreeding within a small gene pool caused by the isolation of Scandinavian horse herds from those of the Continent). Each warrior carried an axe, a sword, a long knife, a spear, and a round shield. Bows and arrows were also used, although it was regarded as cowardly by many warriors. Only leaders wore armor of chain mail and helmets. Common warriors sometimes wore reindeer hide, which may actually have been more effective than chain mail.

Battle tactics were rudimentary and the bonds of personal loyalty between warriors and chiefs counted for much in maintaining cohesion. Bands of warriors would erect a defensive “shield wall” of overlapping shields, similliar to the testudo formation of the Roman legions. The fighting would devolve into more of a gang raid than a pitched battle, with warriors engaging one another in single combat. Warriors’ skills involved considerable athletic ability; they could hurl their spears with deadly accuracy, sometimes two at once, and even catch spears thrown at them in midflight to throw back again. The ferocity and resolution of the Norse warriors may have stemmed from their belief that dying a heroic death they would be transported in the arms of the Valkyries, to Valhalla, the realm of the gods. Some warriors would transform themselves into a painless, trance-like frenzy, called berserkergang, in which state in which they believed they would have superhuman strength and protection in battle. Sometimes the only way to decide a battle was for one side to capture the leaders of the other. This would be attempted by 20 or 30 men forming themselves into a wedge known as the svínfylking to force their way through enemy lines.

After the 9th century as power began to be consolidated in the hands of great chieftains and kings, large armies were assembled. Armies may have numbered as much as 7,000 for a particular battle or campaign. After the campaign the warriors would disperse to their normal occupations of farming or trading. In the late 10th century in Scandinavia the earlier numerous scattered small forts gave way to larger ring forts, all built to a similar design and able to house 6,000 to 9,000 men. They may have been royal defensive and administrative centers, possibly built by Harold II, king of Denmark, as a defense against the German Empire. They appear to have been used for only 30 years or so.

Transportation

The emegence of the Viking ship had an impact as great as the arrival of horse chariotry in the Bronze Age. The ships of the Norsemen allowed a mobility unmatched in Europe until that time. Shipbuilding was greatly facilitated by the development of the iron industry and the making of iron tools. By at least the eighth century true oceangoing vessels were being built with mast and sail and a keel, which allowed them to maintain their course in heavy seas and even sail windward. The Viking ships were wonderfully versatile, able to go on both long ocean voyages and to sail on rivers. With their shallow draft, the Norse ships could negotiate small rivers and their light weight made dragging them upstream and even overland when necessary easy. When the wind was contrary, they could be propelled with oars. It is estimated that some of the boats built for speed and maneuverability were capable of speeds of 10 or 11 knots and more in short bursts.

A number of distinct types of ships were built by the Norsemen and used for different purposes. The one that has received the most attention is the longship, also known as the drakkar, the “dragon ship,” . The longships were long and low with fearsome heads glowering from stem and stern, built for war, with shields hung from end to end. The longships carried raiders to the coasts and inland waterways of Europe. However, they did not carry Norse settlers to the Faroese Islands, Iceland, Greenland, or to the shores of North America. For these journey's, the vikings used the Knarr. The Knarr was wider and more stable than a longship, with a much higher freeboard, and was the only Viking ship type capable of making long ocean voyages. Such ships could carry 30-50 men, a herd of cattle, and the timber for building a new farmstead hundreds of miles across open water. The Karves were a type of small ships similar to the Knarr. They were used for human transport and the movement of livestock and other goods were able to navigate in very shallow water.

The Norsemen's personal attachment to their ships was more than a little mystical. The ship was often highly decorated on the sides, the prow, and especially the sail. Women participated in the decorating. The Viking saw his ship as the means to his worldly achievements, as well as his reward in the afterlife. Young men would be given command of a ship to establish their manhood and prove their viability as leaders. These ships would be well cared for and given lyrical names.

Economy

The Norsemen farmed, fished, and hunted to substain their society. During the Iron Age their agricultural methods became more refined through the use of new iron tools. They also made increasing use of the technique of strip parceling, arranging fields in long strips, and that of two-course rotation, planting different crops from season to season or leaving fields fallow in alternate years. The length of the growing season and the types of crops planted varied with latitude. In southern parts of Scandinavia a seven-month growing season allowed for a variety of crops, but to the north wheat and rye were the staples, with few fruits and vegetables grown. Animal husbandry was more important than crop farming in many areas. Cattle raising was most important, often supplemented by pigs, but goats and sheep were also raised.

Periodically, Norse hunters would travel in boats northward in search of walrus for their meat, skins, and ivory. They also trapped furbearing mammals such as sable and ermine for trading purposes. According to the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great, who wrote an account of the voyages of a Norwegian named Ohthere, the Norsemen, skilled fishermen, were also known to hunt whales.

Parts of Scandinavia are known for iron ore deposits, and the Norsemen were skilled iron producers, establishing large encampments for mining. They used iron for farm implements, weapons, and nails in building and in reinforcing ships. Iron axes allowed the harvesting of timber from the extensive forests in the region.

In the 9th century, tension arose as chieftains striving to become kings struggled to consolidate and increase their power by ending the constant destabilizing influence of free-roving warriors, causing many indpendent seafarers to expand aborad. The new powerful rulers also sought to organize and regularize trade by establishing trading centers such as Birka in Sweden, Hedeby in Denmark, and Kaupang in Norway. These were planned towns with regular street grids and, no doubt, designated marketplaces, warehouses and harbors. There seems to have been no clear-cut distinction for the Norse Vikings between trading and raiding. If they encountered unwarlike people, such as monks in rich monasteries, they took them by force. If they encountered forces too strong for them, they negotiated treaties and began trading. Trade could involve violence as the Vikings fought eachother for control of the lucrative trade routes to Constantinople and the Caspian Sea. In the early 9th century, Norse traders who were know as the Rus organized in an early politity which gradually evolved into the medieval state of Rus.

The Norsemen traded a wide range of goods, transporting them over great distances. They engaged in internal trade and had access to many natural resources. The more prosperous Vikings in Denmark and southern Sweden traded with groups inland and to the north. Dried fish, down, furs, sheep, cattle, goatskins, leather, hawks, honey, wax, nuts, grain, amber, iron, slaves, timber, weapons and armor were some of the items traded by the Vikings in the eastern markets. Hoards of 8th century Baghdad minted silver coins nad Byzantine gold found in the soils around Birka, a large trading settlement in Lake Mälaren, Sweden, suggests that Russia was mainly a waystation on the route to the riches of the Byzantine and the Arab world.

Architecture

The typical dwellings of the Norsemen were built according to a plan that had changed little since the Neolithic Age. The earliest farmers on the north-central European plain lived in longhouses built of timber, with peaked roofs held up by transverse and longitudinal beams supported by two parallel lines of timber uprights. The sides of houses, often made of sod or of wood, were typically bowed or curved outward at the center and had curved roof ridges, making them resemble upside-down boats. Inside each house was an elongated central fire pit. The interior was often subdivided into rooms, one of which housed animals. Later in the Viking Age, animals would be housed in separate structures. Low benches ran along the walls of the house. People slept covered with quilts filled with down from geese and eider ducks. Around the 10th century the Vikings began to build log houses. Norse farmsteads usually included outbuildings in addition to the main longhouse. Outbuildings were used for cooking, spinning, weaving, and other crafts as well as for food and fodder storage.

House types common in Scandinavia during the Viking Age were also built by settlers on the North Atlantic islands. On Iceland in the early stages of Viking settlement so-called Hiberno-Norse house types were also built, such as ancient Irish traditional lodges; or bruiden, built at crossways where refreshment was freely offered to travelers.

Clothes

Knowledge of Norse clothing is obtained from depictions on picture stones as well as burials. Bits of cloth in graves have been preserved along with jewelry people wore. Textiles were made of worsted wool in twill patterns and dyed in bright colors, sometimes in plaids. There seems to have been a preference for certain colors in different regions: reds in the Danelaw, purples in Ireland, and blues and greens in Scandinavia proper. Other textiles used included linen and silk.

In general the cut of clothing changed little during the Viking Age, though styles of decoration did change. Men wore long trousers, tunics covered with a coat or jacket, and a cloak pinned at one shoulder, usually with a ring-shaped brooch. Women wore long gowns covered with a sort of apron fastened at each shoulder with an oval brooch. These brooches were often elaborately decorated and made of precious metals. More than 50 styles of brooch have been identified; this great diversity may mean that brooches were a way of announcing the wearer’s regional affiliation or social class. Married women wore a white cloth over their head fastened behind each ear with a knot. Men’s and women’s clothes often had elaborate woven decoration in the convoluted animal styles that changed over time. The Vikings who were in the Varangian Guard unit in Byzantium probably wore a cotton padding garment, the bambakion, which was standard among Byzantine soldiers.

Art

Norse art was intimately intertwined with their religion. The Vikings believed that the spiritual world surrounded and pervaded every aspect of their life. The elaborate decorations of even everyday objects are both an expression of this orientation and an actual practical application, as indicated by the snarling animal heads on ships’ prows that were used to ward away evil spirits. Much decoration depicts Norse myths. The twining, spiraling motifs on both jewelry and practical objects embody this sense of the invisible pervading the visible and the belief that every act required the blessing of the gods. A number of ornamentation styles evolved over the centuries, with some creatures depicted as curvaceous and others as ribbon shaped. The various styles are named after archaeological sites, such as Oseberg, Borre, Jelling, Mammen, and Urnes.

Legacy

Despite the familiarity of the name Viking with all its associations, surprisingly little is known in detail and with certainty about the impact of the Vikings on the countries where they raided. Until recently the main contemporary sources of information were the medieval chronicles such as the monastic Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the Frankish annals, with the Kievan Primary Chronicle and the Norse sagas being written centuries after the Viking age. At the time of the Viking expansion, most if not all educated people were churchmen and the modern sense of the rigorous separation of the sacred realm of the spirit from the secular realm of facts hardly existed. The writing of history was as much a matter of recording the acts of God as of humans, and the Bible was considered to contain literal truth. The tendency of Christian writers such as Alcuin of York, an eighth-century Anglo-Saxon scholar at the court of Karl the Great, and Wulfstan, the 11th-century Archbishop of York who wrote the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, was to portray the Viking raids as a judgment sent from God. In general, religious writers were understandably biased against these raiders, making the reliability of their accounts suspect. Christian kings of the time engaged in warfare just as destructive and brutal as that of the Vikings without receiving the excoriation of the church. The clerics’ idea that the Vikings were brutish barbarians probably derives as much from their pagan religion as from their actions. This characterization does not square with the fact that the Vikings had created a vibrant literature, that they were highly skilled metalworkers, had developed a sophisticated art style, and that their ships and their knowledge of naval navigation were among the most advanced in the world at the time.

Nevertheless, evidence of the extent to which Viking settlement in new lands altered the social, cultural, and political landscape is found through archaeology. In addition, the distribution of towns and physical features with Norse names, and even DNA analysis identifying genetic similliarities between modern-day people in the British Isles and Scandinavia are further evidence of the Norse influence.

References

See also

Scandinavians

Scandinavia

Viking

Viking Age

Varangian

Rus'

Swedes (Germanic tribe)

Geats

Gutes

Goths

Danes (Germanic tribe)

Swedes

Danes

Norwegians

Icelanders

Faroese

Norse-Gaels (Gall Goidel)

Normans

External links

Youtube.com - Vikings - Erik the Red & Leif Eriksson

Youtube.com - The Real Vikings

Youtube.com - The Varangians

Youtube.com - Blood of the Vikings

Category:Norsemen Category:Viking Age Category:Viking Age people Category:Germanic peoples Category:North Germanic peoples Category:Ancient Germanic peoples Category:History of Denmark Category:History of the Faroe Islands Category:History of Greenland Category:History of Norway Category:History of Sweden Category:History of Iceland Category:History of England

da:Norrøn es:Nórdico (pueblo) gd:Lochlannach ko:노르드인 it:Norsemen ja:ノース人 sv:Nordmän th:ชาวนอร์ส

birthname	Harvey Lee Yeary
birth date	April 23, 1939
birth place	Wyandotte, Michigan, U.S.
occupation	Actor
yearsactive	1964–present
spouse	Kathy Robinson (1961-1964)Farrah Fawcett (1973-1982)Karen Velez (1988-1994)Faith Noelle Cross (2002-present)
children	3 sons, 1 daughter }}

Lee Majors (born April 23, 1939) is an American actor who has worked in television and movies and first became a star in his role as Victoria Barkley's husband's illegitimate son, Heath Barkley, in ''The Big Valley'' (1965–1969). Majors is also well known as Owen Marshall's law partner/friend, Jess Brandon, in ''Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law'' (1971–1974), as Colonel Steve Austin, in ''The Six Million Dollar Man'' (1974–1978) and ''The Bionic Woman'' (1976-1978), and as Colt Seavers in ''The Fall Guy'' (1981–1986).

Early life

Majors was born Harvey Lee Yeary in the Detroit suburb of Wyandotte, Michigan. Parents Carl & Alice Yeary were both killed in separate car accidents (prior to his birth and when he was one year old respectively) and at age two, Majors was adopted by an uncle and aunt, Harvey and Mildred Yeary, and moved with them, and their biological son, Bill, to Middlesboro, Kentucky.

Since his adoptive older brother had been a football star in school, Majors tirelessly committed himself to the sport. While a student at Middlesboro High School, he participated in many sports from track to football. He graduated in 1957, and earned a scholarship to Indiana University, where he again competed in sports. Majors transferred to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, in 1959. He played in his first game the following year, but suffered a severe back injury which left him paralyzed for two weeks, and ended his college football career. Following his injury, he turned his attention to acting and performed in plays at the Pioneer Playhouse in Danville, Kentucky. Majors graduated from Eastern in 1962 with a degree in History and Physical Education.

After college, he received an offer to try out for the St. Louis Cardinals football team. Instead, he moved to Los Angeles and found work at the Los Angeles Park and Recreation Department as the Recreation Director for North Hollywood Park. This was after a brief stint playing for the new football franchise Boston Patriots as a safety. In LA, Majors met many actors and industry professionals, including Dick Clayton, who had been James Dean's agent, and Clayton suggested he attend his acting school. After one year of acting school, Clayton felt that Majors was ready to start his career. At this time, he picked up the stage name ''Lee Majors'' as a tribute to childhood Johnny Majors who was a player and future coach for the University of Tennessee. Majors also studied at Estelle Harmon's acting school at MGM.

Television and film roles

At age 25, Majors landed his first, although uncredited, role in ''Strait-Jacket'' (1964), which starred Joan Crawford. After appearing in a 1965 episode of ''Gunsmoke'', he starred as Howard White in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “The Monkey’s Paw - A Retelling,” based on the short story by W. W. Jacobs later the same year.

''The Big Valley''

Majors got his big break when he beat out over 400 young actors, including Burt Reynolds, for the co-starring role of Heath Barkley in a new ABC western series, ''The Big Valley'', which starred Barbara Stanwyck. Also starring on the show was another newcomer, Linda Evans, who played Heath's younger sister, Audra. Richard Long and Peter Breck played his brothers Jarrod and Nick, respectively. One of Heath's frequently used expressions during the series was "Boy howdy!" ''Big Valley'' was an immediate hit. During the series, Majors landed the lead role in “The Ballad of Andy Crocker” (1969), a made-for-television film which was first broadcast by ABC. The film is notable as being one of the very first films to deal with the subject matter of Vietnam veterans "coming home". That same year, he was offered the chance to star in ''Midnight Cowboy'' (1969), but ''The Big Valley'' was renewed for another season and he was forced to decline the role (which later went to Jon Voight). When ''The Big Valley'' was cancelled in 1969, he signed a long-term contract with Universal Studios. In 1970, Majors joined the cast of ''The Virginian'' for its last season.

''Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law''

In 1971, he landed the role of Arthur Hill's partner, Jess Brandon, on ''Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law'', which garnered critical acclaim during its three seasons on ABC. In one episode, his then girlfriend, Farrah Fawcett, guest-starred.

''The Six Million Dollar Man''

Majors' co-starring role on Owen Marshall led him to a starring role as Colonel Steve Austin, an ex-astronaut with bionic implants in ''The Six Million Dollar Man'', a 1973 television movie broadcast on ABC.

In 1974, the network decided to turn it into a weekly series. The series became a huge international success, being screened in over 70 countries, and made Majors a leading pop icon of the 1970s. Co-starring on the show was Richard Anderson as Austin's boss, Oscar Goldman, and Martin E. Brooks as the doctor incharge of the bionics lab, Rudy Wells (also played by at various times during the show by Alan Oppenheimer). Lee also invited his then wife, Farrah Fawcett, to guest-star in four episodes. By this time, Majors and Fawcett were a high-profile Hollywood couple and were on the cover of magazines everywhere. Majors also made his directorial debut in 1975, on an episode called "One of Our Running Backs Is Missing," which co-starred pro football players such as Larry Csonka and Dick Butkus.

During the show's second season, the producers gave Austin a love interest on the show, Jaime Sommers (played by actress Lindsay Wagner). Steve and Jaime rekindle their school-age relationship and get engaged before she is injured in a skydiving accident and is given similar bionic implants to Austin, but with a bionic right ear instead of a bionic left eye. At the end of the two-part episode, Jaime dies. However, ABC received a flood of letters from upset fans who wanted Wagner's character brought back from the dead. This was done and the character was eventually given her own spin-off show, ''The Bionic Woman''.

In 1977, with ''The Six Million Dollar Man'' still a hit series, Majors tried to renegotiate his contract with Universal Television. The studio in turn filed a lawsuit to force him to report to work due to stipulations within his existing contract that had not yet expired. When he did not report to work that June, studio executives relented and offered Majors a raise. However, ratings began to decline and ''The Six Million Dollar Man'' was canceled in March 1978 (as was ''The Bionic Woman''). In November 2010, Time Life released a 40 DVD set featuring every episode and bonus features from the show.

Feature film career

Majors first major foray into feature films was a co-starring role in the 1968 Charlton Heston film ''Will Penny'', where he received an "Introducing" credit. After his role as Steve Austin, Majors starred in several movies: ''The Norseman'' (1978), ''Steel'' (1979), ''Killer Fish'' (1979), ''Agency'' (1980), ''The Last Chase'' (1981), and also made cameo appearances in ''Scrooged'' (1988) ''Out Cold'' (2001) ''Big Fat Liar'' (2002) and ''The Brothers Solomon'' (2007) ''The Story of Bonnie and Clyde'' (2010)

''The Fall Guy''

In 1981, Majors returned in another long-running television series. Producer Glen A. Larson (who had first worked with Majors on ''Alias Smith and Jones'', where Majors had a one episode part, and later on ''The Six Million Dollar Man'') asked him to star in the pilot of ''The Fall Guy''. Majors played Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stuntman and part-time bounty hunter. ''The Fall Guy'' allowed Majors an opportunity to show off his comedic abilities, something audiences hadn’t yet seen. Majors was also a producer and a director on the show, and even sang its theme song, the self-effacing "Unknown Stuntman." Majors also invited several longtime friends, Linda Evans, Peter Breck, Lindsay Wagner and Richard Anderson, to guest-star in various episodes. The series ran for five seasons until 1986. According to an interview on Sirius/XM's Opie & Anthony Show in November 2010, the studio wanted to do another season of ''The Fall Guy'' but Majors was getting burnt out on Hollywood and felt the audience might have been getting burnt out on him.

After ''The Fall Guy'', Majors' career became more low-key, and he made a series of made-for-TV movies and several pilots for unsuccessful TV shows. Between 1987 and 1994, he and Lindsay Wagner reunited in three ''The Six Million Dollar Man''/''The Bionic Woman'' TV movies. In 1990, he had a recurring role in ''Tour of Duty'', and a recurring role in the short-lived 1992 series, ''Raven''.

Personal life

Majors has been married to:

Kathy Robinson (married 1961, divorced 1964); one child, actor Lee Majors II (born circa 1962). Majors II appeared as an OSI agent in the three ''The Six Million Dollar Man'' / ''The Bionic Woman'' reunion movies with his father.

Farrah Fawcett, actress, (married July 28, 1973, separated 1979, divorced February 16, 1982). During the first six years of their marriage, she was billed as ''Farrah Fawcett-Majors''. In 1976, the couple made TV history by being a husband and wife who simultaneously starred in separate top-rated shows (''The Six Million Dollar Man'' and ''Charlie's Angels''). After they split, Fawcett famously said, "If he's the six-million-dollar man, I'm the ten-billion-dollar woman." When Fawcett died on June 25, 2009, after her three-year-long battle with anal cancer, Majors issued a statement which read, "She fought a tremendous battle against a terrible disease. She was an angel on earth and now an angel forever." Besides attending her funeral, several reports indicated that Majors reconnected with Fawcett before her death. Karen Velez, ''Playboy'' Playmate, (married 1988, divorced 1994); one daughter, Nikki Loren, and twin sons, Dane Luke and Trey Kulley.

Faith Majors, actress and model, (married on November 1, 2002).

In the middle of 2003, Majors had heart bypass surgery.

Trivia

He starred in a German TV car commercial with his wife Faith Majors parodying the beginning of ''The Fall Guy'', always refusing the challenges presented in the original.

Majors played Jaret Reddick's disconnected father in Bowling For Soup's video, "When We Die."

The football field on North 15th Street in his hometown of Middlesboro, Kentucky, was renamed in his honor.

Majors voiced the character of "Big" Mitch Baker in the video game ''Grand Theft Auto: Vice City''.

In ''The Simpsons'' episode "Burns' Heir", Marge has a fantasy about Lee Majors, in which she runs away with him after Bart graduates from Harvard in the future.

In 2007 he voiced a character on the APTN stop motion animated children's program Wapos Bay: The Series parodying Steve Austin named "Steve from Austin".

In 2007, he played a minor role in Stephen King's The Mist.

In 2007, he played Grandpa Max in Ben 10: Race Against Time.

On January 1, 2008, Majors appeared in the role of "God" on the 7th season premiere and series finale of ''According to Jim''.

Also in 2008, Majors played a member of the Minutemen (dedicated to preventing illegal border crossings) in Season Four of the Showtime series ''Weeds'', where he recruits Kevin Nealon’s character.

Majors also played Coach Ross on the CW Network's television series "The Game", which ran from October 1, 2006 to May 20, 2009.

Endorses Lee Major's Rechargeable Bionic Hearing Aid

Lee Majors also appeared on ITVs The British Comedy Awards 2009 on the 12th December 2009 alongside Claudia Winkleman.

He played in Human Target (Season 1, Episode 12) as the mentor of Christopher Chance.

Majors played the crusty sailing instructor on the ''Community'' episode "Beginner Pottery".

He provides the voice of General Abernathy in G.I. Joe: Renegades.

Majors made a brief appearance as Don Reger in the episode "Well Suitored" of CBS series ''$#*! My Dad Says'' (2011).

Cast in the big screen remake of ''The Big Valley'' (2011). Majors is playing Tom Barkley, the father of the character he originally played on the television series, Heath Barkley.

References

External links

Category:1939 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from Michigan Category:Adoptees adopted by relations Category:American adoptees Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Eastern Kentucky University alumni Category:People from Middlesboro, Kentucky Category:People from Wyandotte, Michigan

de:Lee Majors es:Lee Majors fr:Lee Majors it:Lee Majors nl:Lee Majors ja:リー・メジャース no:Lee Majors pl:Lee Majors pt:Lee Majors simple:Lee Majors fi:Lee Majors sv:Lee Majors