I.

Introduction

Vikings, Nordic peoples—Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians—who raided and settled in large areas of eastern and western Europe during a period of Scandinavian expansion from about 800 to 1100.

The raids of the Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries are among the best-known episodes of early medieval history. These fierce attacks from Scandinavia fell on the British Isles, the Atlantic and North Sea shoreline of the Carolingian Empire, which included most of what are now France, Germany, and the Low Countries, and to the east on what became Russia. They took a heavy toll on the fragile political development and stability of Europe, although the damage caused by the Vikings may well have been exaggerated by the main historians of the period. These historians were usually priests who looked upon the pagan Vikings with particular horror. In addition, the Church, as a wealthy and relatively defenseless target, may have suffered more heavily than many other sectors of European society. Despite the notoriety the Vikings attracted because of their ferocity, within a century or two they converted to Christianity and settled in the lands they had raided. At the same time, the Vikings were developing new outposts of settlement in Iceland, Greenland, North America, and the North Atlantic, and establishing kingdoms in Scandinavia along the lines of the European kingdoms to the south. As they became assimilated in their new lands, they became farmers and traders as well as rulers and warriors.