I’m not sure when I’ll do my next book review, as I recently downloaded a huge book on the Vikings in Scotland, The Viking Highlands: The Norse Age in the Highlands, by D. Rognvald Kelday, and it’ll take me a while to plow through it. But I’ll comment on something the author says right now.

Almost at the very beginning the author, who seems to have otherwise done commendable research, makes the following statement:

Norway, the land of the ‘north way’, had witnessed a rapid rise in population in the early part of the seventh century, leading eventually to a lack of land for some and a lack of opportunities for others.

This is certainly a view which may be found, prominently, in many books on the Viking Age. Most authors, though, are content to list overpopulation as one of several possible causes for the increase in Norse raiding. Kelday chooses to state flatly that overpopulation was the sole cause.

The problem with this statement is that it’s entirely false, and known to be false.

As my friend Prof. Torgrim Titlestad of the University of Stavanger writes in his book, Viking Norway (sadly out of print for now), archaeology has discovered no—that is zero—evidence for the overpopulation theory. Norwegian archaeologists report that iron ore extraction declined significantly in the Viking Age, and that moose and reindeer trapping also declined. These are the opposite of what would be expected in a situation where population was increasing and new sources of foodstuffs required. In fact, it was during the Viking Age that the Medieval Warming Period was getting under way, and there was plenty of food pretty much everywhere in Europe.

So why do historians cling to the overpopulation theory, in the teeth of actual archaeological evidence? Titlestad identifies the reason in Viking Norway:

It is also not insignificant that the overpopulation theory was tailor-made for a materialist/Marxist historical outlook…. (p. 359)

Titlestad reports, reassuringly, that the Marxist view is diminishing in influence in historical circles (something that’s news to me) and that other explanations are beginning to get more serious consideration at last.