Middle Ages || Season 02

The Vikings’ settlement in the British Isles led to the formation of new political entities, including the small but militant Kingdom of Dublin in Ireland. In Anglo-Saxon England, King Alfred the Great came to an agreement with the Danish invaders in 879, acknowledging the existence of an independent Viking realm in Northumbria, East Anglia and eastern Mercia. By the middle of the 10th century, Alfred’s successors had restored English control over the territory. In northern Britain, Kenneth MacAlpin united the Picts and the Scots into the Kingdom of Alba. In the early 10th century, the Ottonian dynasty established itself in Germany, and was engaged in driving back the Magyars and fighting the disobedient dukes. After an appeal by the widowed Queen Adelaide of Italy for protection, the German king Otto I crossed the Alps into Italy, married the young widow and had himself crowned king in Pavia in 951. His coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in 962 demonstrated his claim to Charlemagne’s legacy. Otto’s successors remained keenly interested in Italian affairs but the absent German kings were unable to assert permanent authority over the local aristocracy. In the Iberian Peninsula, Asturias expanded slowly south in the 8th and 9th centuries, and continued as the Kingdom of León.

The Eastern European trade routes towards Central Asia and the Near East were controlled by the Khazars; their multiethnic empire resisted the Muslim expansion, and their leaders converted to Judaism. At the end of the 9th century, a new trade route developed, bypassing Khazar territory and connecting Central Asia with Europe across Volga Bulgaria; here the local inhabitants converted to Islam. In Scandinavia, contacts with Francia paved the way for missionary efforts by Christian clergy, and Christianization was closely associated with the growth of centralised kingdoms in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Swedish traders and slave hunters ranged down the rivers of the East European Plain, captured Kyiv from the Khazars, and even attempted to seize Constantinople in 860 and 907. Norse colonists settled in Iceland and created a political system that hindered the accumulation of power by ambitious chieftains.

Byzantium revived its fortunes under Emperor Basil I and his successors Leo VI and Constantine VII, members of the Macedonian dynasty. Commerce revived and the emperors oversaw the extension of a uniform administration to all the provinces. The imperial court was the centre of a revival of classical learning, a process known as the Macedonian Renaissance. The military was reorganised, which allowed the emperors John I and Basil II to expand the frontiers of the empire. Missionary efforts by both Eastern and Western clergy resulted in the conversion of the Moravians, Danubian Bulgars, Czechs, Poles, Magyars, and the inhabitants of the Kievan Rus’. Moravia fell victim to Magyar invasions around 900, Bulgaria to Byzantine expansionism between 971 and 1018. After the fall of Moravia, dukes of the Czech Přemyslid dynasty consolidated authority in Bohemia. In Poland, the destruction of old power centres and construction of new strongholds accompanied the formation of state under the Piast dukes. In Hungary, the princes of the Árpád dynasty applied extensive violence to crush opposition by rival Magyar chieftains. The Rurikid princes of Kievan Rus’ replaced the Khazars as the hegemon power of East Europe’s vast forest zones after Rus’ raiders sacked the Khazar capital Atil in 965.