Did vikings sail up to the Vezère?

by XizzyO

I'm currently vacationing in the Vezère Valley in the Dordogne region of France, a beautiful region with a lot of (pre)history. The caves in the cliffs along the river have been inhabited for thousands of years. And some of these places have been fortified again and again (for example Forte de Reignac).

Having read some things about the viking age, I was wondering if the northern raiders made it up the Dordogne river and its tributary the Vezère. The information I found about the viking raids in France focused mainly on Paris. Does someone have some insights on the other great rivers of France?

y_sengaku

As you suspect, not only the Seine and Paris, but also several major river networks across now France were plagued by the Vikings in course of the 9th century.

Even the Rhône that pours in the Mediterranean was not immune from their attacks (Christys 2015: 58).

As for the Dordogne, however, our available selection of the sources on raiding is really limited (for Vikings' possible activity in south-western France) due to the general lack of literary centers like the monastery in southern Francia.

I've mainly identified these two entries from famous contemporary primary texts:

  • Fragmentary Annals of Fontenelle (located in Normandy, far north from Aquitaine) mentions in its section for AD 848 that: "Charles [the Bald] marched into Aquitaine with [the army of] the Franks and captured 9 Viking (Danish) ships on the Dordogne, and further, killed the pirates, in the Lent (Latin original text in MGH SS 2, is found in the linked dMGH version)."
  • The fundamental source for 9th century Western Francia, the Annals of St. Bertin also states in its entry for AD 849 that: "The Northmen sacked and burned the city of Périgueux in Aquitaine, and returned unscathed to their ships (Translation is taken from: [Nelson trans. 1991: 68])."

Thus, a few ships of the Scandinavian raiders certainly sailed into the Dordogne at least up to Périgueux in the middle of the 9th century, but I'm not sure how far some of them went further in the Vezère Valley.

The most famous local source on the 9th century Aquitaine and SW Francia, Annals of Angoulême unfortunately has too many lacunae in its entry so that we cannot use it to map the activity of either Charles the Bald or Vikings mentioned in non-local sources above.

Anyway, it's true that the Vikings certainly sailed also on the Dordogne.

References:

  • Nelson, Janet L. (trans.). The Annals of St. Bertin. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991.

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  • Christys, Ann. Vikings in the South: Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
  • Gabrielsen, Glenn. The Vikings in the Dordogne. Master Thesis, University of Oslo, 2003.