Conference at the Jaufré Rudel Medieval Festivals, September 2025
The first edition of the “medieval festivals of Jaufré Rudel” was held in the setting of the magnificent citadel of Blaye overlooking the Gironde estuary in September 2025. Jaufré Rudel was a Blayese troubadour, contemporary of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who died during the Second Crusade. The name Jaufré would be compared to the Scandinavian name Jafri.
At the heart of their book fair, I had the opportunity to give a lecture on the presence of northern men in this estuary.
There are few local sources evoking northern men in the Gironde estuary. However, we do have some Arab sources.
The region is indeed mentioned by al Qazwini. Excerpt: "Bordeaux [Barbhi] is a city in the land of the Franks, rich in water, trees, fruits, and cereals. Most of its inhabitants are Christians."
This is the description of a prosperous country whose inhabitants are Christian, though not all. He continued: "It is a great city [Bordeaux], built of lime and sand. It is on a tumultuous river called the Garonne, in which it happens that Norman boats are shipwrecked during storms so wide the river and its rapid current." The author indicates an endemic presence of northern men in the estuary, which proves to be particularly dangerous, even for them. Such a Scandinavian presence should not be surprising: the men of the North settled at the mouths of rivers that were natural trade routes. Al-Qazwīnī quotes : "There is a species of tree called mādiqa. When hunger assails them, they remove the bark of the tree and find between the sapwood and the wood a white substance. They feed on it for one or two months or more until the weather improves." The recourse to the sapwood of this species surprises the Arab author. In the Nordic world, you had to go through long winters without fresh products. This should have caused vitamin C deficiency and triggered scurvy, a disease that decimated the crews until James Cook managed to find the right diet. But such deficiencies are rarely discussed in the sagas. The reason is simple: the Scandinavians found the vitamin C they needed in the sapwood of a fir tree. They made it into flour and added it to the cereal flour when making their bread. This dietary practice of the Great North – eating sapwood to get through winter – seems to suggest the Scandinavian origin of the pagans populating the estuary. Al-Qazwīnī adds an interesting piece of information: "A hill, by the ocean, dominates the city. And on the hill, there is a statue that seems to be telling people not to try crossing the ocean."
This Arab source overlaps with a Scandinavian source, the Saga of Olaf the Saint. The farthest point reached by Olaf was Karlsar. The Geographical Dictionary, which constitutes volume XII of the Scripta Historia Islandorum, translates Karlsar as "The Waters of Charles". Some think that this name referred to Gibraltar, others that it was the estuary of the Gironde. This view was held by the Norwegian historians Munch, Keyser and Unger.
In Karlsar, Olaf had a dream and saw a large statue that ordered him to return to the North. This is clearly the statue mentioned by al-Qazwini. The saga states that the men living near Karlsar were pagans and idolaters, and that Olaf fought them. Olaf’s expedition took place around the year Mil, that is to say after the Christian victory of 982. Clearly, there were pagan pockets in Aquitaine. These heathen pockets would not have been fought by the local lords, but by Scandinavian "crusaders" - which was Olaf the Holy - coming to pursue and eliminate their conspecifics who remained faithful to the old religion.
Olaf expected favorable winds at Karlsar to reach Gibraltar. This last element made Reinhart Dozy believe that Karlsar was in the Strait of Gibraltar, probably at Cadiz. However, entering the Mediterranean presented no difficulty; there was no need to wait for favorable winds at Cadiz. On the other hand, crossing Cape Finisterre in Galicia with prevailing westerly winds was very dangerous. Waiting, in the estuary of the Gironde, the east wind to try to circumvent Galicia was, from a maritime point of view, perfectly coherent.
Briefly, these sources tell us that:
1 – the men of the North were well established in the estuary, especially in the Médoc,
2 – despite the Christian victory of 982, these men were still pagans around the year 1000,
3 – Pagan homes will not be extinguished by local lords, but by expeditionary corps of Scandinavian crusaders coming to "clean up" the Christian lands polluted by their pagan ancestors. A century later, the crusader Sigurd Jorsalafari traveled to Portugal where he massacred the pagans living there. These pagan refugees in Portugal would not have been Muslims, but the last Scandinavian pagans.
Joël Supéry