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The Tenth Century

The Vikings

The group most associated with raiding, though, is surely the Vikings, and they were most active during the same period as the Magyars and the Muslim pirates. Their impact was rather more complex, however.

Who were the Vikings? The word is a modern one, the exact meaning of which gets argued endlessly. Christian chronicles never called them "vikings"--they were known as the Northmen.  They were the people from Denmark, from Norway, and from Sweden. Their raids began in the early 9th century and continued in one form or another right up to the end of the 11th century.

The usual image of a Viking raid is one of a sort of mindless burning and pillaging, but the reality was rather different. The activity lasted for about three hundred years, so it is only sensible to realize that there must have been different kinds of raiding. Some were raids for plunder: a fleet of ships anywhere from three or four up to several score would attack a region specifically to gain loot. Their objective was to enrich themselves and then to return home. If there was burning and the like, it was to terrorize the locals or perhaps to burn down a fortification.

A rather different type of activity was actual invasion. Vikings came with the specific intent of subduing an area and settling it with their own people. Such regions were not generally regarded as annexations of Norway or Denmark or Sweden but became little kingdoms in their own right. In other cases, it was more a matter of a warlord who decided it was more convenient to remain in the invaded territory than to return home in the winter. So they stayed, sometimes for years, sometimes forever. Finally, there were invasions that were intended as acts of conquest, to expand the lands held by this or that Viking king.

To the victims, of course, it was all of a piece. Vikings were famous for their ability to terrorize, mainly because they moved so swiftly and tended to attack places that were not well defended, preferring to go around a fortress rather than to besiege it. Their longships could sail in very shallow water, and the navigable rivers that so benefit trade in Europe proved to be watery highways that allowed the Vikings to strike far into the interior of the continent. Monasteries in particular suffered, for they were generally wealthy and generally made easy targets. And, since many of our records of this time come from monastic chronicles, we of course get a very vivid picture of this side of the Vikings.

The fact is, that Viking peoples eventually settled down, all across northern Europe. From Swedish settlers in Kievan Russia, to Norwegians in Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, and northern England, to Danes in east England and northern France, the Vikings made a significant impact on the development of medieval Europe. Only some of them were warriors, and of these only some went on Viking raids. Many more were farmers, fishermen, and merchants. These brought Scandinavian culture into the mix that was slowly simmering and becoming Europe.