The Life of Saint Findan preserves an extensive secondhand account of viking captivity. Findan grew up in eastern Ireland in the early 800s. His father was a miles for the local princeps, which is to say he was the enforcer for the official who ran a nearby monastery (translated here as “prince”). Vikings had been raiding Ireland since before Findan was born, and at one point, a group of vikings seized Findan’s sister. Findan’s father dispatched his son to retrieve her, but another group of vikings ambushed Findan along the way. His captors ultimately freed him, reasoning they should not hinder efforts to ransom a captive. Findan’s biographer also recorded a second narrow escape before giving more detail on a third encounter. This time, Findan fell victim to Irish collaborators who arranged to have vikings kidnap their rival.

This must have been around 845 when Findan was 42 years old and the chieftain of his clan. He was eventually sold to a Northman who was returning home, presumably to Norway. When the ship encountered a small arriving fleet and a fight broke out between the crews, Findan rose up to help. Scandinavian laws prohibited slaves from fighting as vikings, and Findan might have set himself on a path to freedom. The ship stopped in the Orkney Islands north of Britain. Findan’s biographer did not name the island, but the Holm of Papay seems most likely. Findan hid and waited for the crew to depart, and several days later he risked crossing open water to reach the nearest inhabited land.

Findan met a bishop there and entered his service. When the bishop died two years later, Findan embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome and later settled at Rheinau Abbey in modern Switzerland. He spent most of his later years in seclusion, and shortly after his death in 881, an Irish companion recorded the details of his life. Several copies survive, including an early manuscript from the 900s.

Translated from the Latin by Matthew C. Delvaux. Anonymous of Rheinau, Vita Findani, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger, MGH SS, 15,1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1887), 502–6, at 503–4, prol. (2)–(7). https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_ss_15_1/index.htm#page/502/mode/1up. This translation CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

(2)        There was a certain man by the name of Findan, Irish by descent, and a citizen of the province of Leinster. He attained, as it were, a perfect life, despite the frequent touch of temptations and trouble. These things, God willing, we shall narrate.

A sister of this man, along with other women, was led captive by gentiles who are called Northmen, laying waste to many places of the Irish island which is also called Hibernia. Findan’s father then commanded his son to take money, redeem his sister, and return to him. Findan, after gathering some companions and an interpreter, desired to fulfill his father’s commands while also keeping a brother’s love in his pious heart. Along the way, however, he soon fell into the hands of pagans, was thrown into fetters, and without delay was taken to their ships, which were lying nearby on the shore.

That day and the following night, bound and fettered, he endured without food or drink. Early the next morning, the Northmen gathered into council, and some—whose minds were more sensible, we believe, having been roused to compassion by God—proposed that anyone who had come there to redeem others should not be thus held, and so he was freed. Therefore, the most holy God, knowing that his servant though still in the garb of a layman would afterwards serve him devotedly in all things, deemed him worthy to be freed from the hands of his enemies. And likewise on a second occasion, when a multitude of these same enemies pursued him as he fled into a house and hid himself behind a door, not one of them could find him, although they ran here and there around him.

(3)        Nor should we keep silent about how Findan began his travels and how he sought to do so admirably. In the same province of Leinster, discord had arisen between two great princes. Findan’s father was a soldier for one of these princes, and he killed a man from the other side. When the princes from the other side heard about this, a great wrath arose in him. He immediately went with a large troop to the home of Findan’s father, intending to destroy him and everything that was his by sword and fire. Arriving by night, he surrounded the house and set fire to the roof, and when Findan’s father tried to escape from the fire, they butchered him.

Findan had been in another building which they similarly set on by fire, but he manfully defended himself at the doorway that they could not seize him. Through the midst of fire and foe, protected by divine grace, he escaped without harm from either. His brother, however, who had been in the same house, they killed. Thus they caused great enmity between the two peoples and relentless discord.

Not long thereafter, through the intervention of their retainers and with no small sum of wealth given to Findan and his people, each side departed in peace. That same year, however, the enemies of Findan—fearing that sorrow for his father would revive in Findan’s heart and that he would seek revenge upon them, and wanting also to eliminate him—they meditated treachery in their hearts. Entering into council, they prepared a feast for Findan in places nearby the sea. When Findan had been summoned, Northmen came into the middle of their feast and seized him—as they had agreed with his enemies to do—binding him in the tightest of fetters and leading him away.

His Northman master, according to his custom, since he did not yet desire to return to his homeland, sold Findan to another, and then he to a third, and he to a fourth. This man, having gathered companions, desired to see his country again, and he led Findan and others with him into captivity.

(4)        When they had crossed into the middle passage of their sailing at sea, they met certain ships of the same people. One of these, coming onboard the ship where Findan was, asked about the character of the island and how things had gone for them there. But on that ship there was someone whose brother had been killed by the one asking the questions, so as soon as he was recognized, he was likewise killed. Seeing this, his companions prepared themselves to fight, and the two ships long struggled in bitter battle.

In this quarrel, though set in fetters, Findan arose desiring to bring aid to his master and companions. But people from the other ships intervened and stopped them from fighting each other, and so the ship in which Findan was departed without harm. Findan’s master then remembered his devotion, by which he had sought to bring him relief although he was fettered. Wanting to repay such faith, he loosed him from his fetters and promised that he would be good to him in the future.

(5)        After these things had happened, they came to some islands near the people of the Picts, which they call the Orkney Islands. Here they disembarked from the ship onto land to refresh their bodies. They also went here and there throughout the islands, waiting for a fair wind. Findan himself, having received permission, began to investigate these island places, both for his health and with a mind anxious for escape.

Discovering a large rock in an obscure spot, he decided to hide himself beneath it immediately, although the rising tide of the sea would regularly submerge it. But once he had done this, he did not know where to turn. The sea pressed against him on one side. On the other, a fear of his enemies, who were running around him and climbing over the rock where he was hiding and calling him by name from all sides, oppressed him greatly. And so preferring to suffer the madness of the sea than to fall into the hands of men who exceeded the ferocity of all beasts, he scorned the danger of the waves, staying in that place that day and the following night without food.

On the next day, however, his enemies stayed on another part of this island. Although the tide of the sea which touched the entrance to his cave had fallen, still a breath of driving wind sometimes forced the flood to enter his hollow. Findan rose up onto his hands, and crawling through overgrown patches for fear of the pagans, scrutinizing everything with care, he sought to find an escape.

Findan had thought he was on the mainland inhabited by men, but seeing the limits of the island, he found it was surrounded on one side by the great belt of the sea and on the other by no small bay. Deserted now by all strength of his body and beset moreover by great infirmity from fetters and from famine, he would not dare trust himself to the waters. For three days he scoured the island and sought an exit—a double task—but sustained only by grass and by water, there he remained.

At dawn on the third day, however, he spied sea monsters and the immense bodies of dolphins playing and rolling by the shore. Considering these things with a silent heart and with the aid of divine mercy, he poured out these prayers with tears on his breast: “O God, you who both created these animal beasts and made me as a man, and who have given these the sea for a path but have fixed my footsteps on the earth, help me with your usual mercy in my present tribulation! To you, O Lord, I devote both body and my soul into your service from this hour forth, and never will I turn my spirit back to worldly desires. Let me seek you in the house of the Apostles, and taking up this pilgrimage, never shall I return to my country. I will serve you with all my strength, and in following you I refuse to turn back from the light.”

(6)        Armed thus in the constancy of his faith, dressed as he was in all his clothing, he immersed himself in the sea. Wondrous is it to say it: divine pity made his garments immediately rigid, so that by these he was sustained and could not drown and by the flotation of these, as it seemed to him, through swelling waves he was borne uninjured to land.

Thus ascending the tallest peak of the mountains to see if he could discern anywhere houses or smoking roofs, he passed two days on a meager provision of herbs. When sunrise dawned on the lands on the third day, behold he saw men walking about at a distance; when he saw them, although they were unknown, he did not hesitate to approach them, rejoicing with an eagerness of mind. Then having received him they led him to the bishop of a nearby town; he also had first studied letters on the island of Ireland and was learned enough with acquaintance of its language. When he died two years later, Findan had enjoyed great kindness and his abundant blessings.

(7)        But Findan having remembered his promise gathered companions and having received permission from his bishop, prepared to go to the regions of Gaul. Seeking there the seat of Martin, wandering afterward through Francia, Alamannia, and Lombardy, he came finally to Rome by the work of his own feet. Returning from there, he visited a certain nobleman in Alamannia; he remained with him as a cleric for four years, accomplished each with the virtue of abstinence and always showing new examples. Then his senior in his own monastery which is called Rheinau, made him to be baptized in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 800 [an error for 854], in the year of his age 51. Where through five years increasing in the grade of virtue each year, finally kindled progressed with greater love, in a tight place he secluded his course and his body sleeps.

Discussion Questions

  1. Was slave raiding a common activity for vikings in Ireland? Did Findan—or his biographer—consider slave raiding to be the primary occupation of vikings in Ireland?
  2. How did Findan experience his captivity? How did his captors try to control their captives? What tools did they use? How did Findan turn these tools to his own advantage?
  3. Findan’s repeated escapes are presented as miracles. What does this suggest about the broader patterns of viking slaving in Ireland?

Related Primary Sources

Additional Translations

  • Somerville, Angus A., and R. Andrew McDonald. The Viking Age: A Reader. 3rd edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. Doc. 43 (The Life of Saint Findan).

Related Secondary Sources

  • Holm, Poul. “The Slave Trade of Dublin, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries.” Peritia 5 (1986): 317–45.
  • Omand, C. J. “The Life of Saint Findan.” In The People of Orkney, ed. R. J. Berry and H. N. Firth, 284-287. Aspects of Orkney 4. Kirkwall: Orkney Press, 1986.
  • Ní Mhaonaigh, Máire. “Friend and Foe: Vikings in Ninth- and Tenth-Century Irish Literature.” In Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age, ed. Howard B. Clarke, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Raghnall Ó Floinn, 381-402. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.

Themes

Captives, Captive Narrative, Flight, Kidnapping, Raiding, Ransom, Religion, Violence