Key takeaways
- Wikipedia describes the Vikings as seafaring Scandinavians who raided, traded and settled across Europe from the late eighth to the late eleventh centuries.
- The Viking Age is conventionally dated from the Lindisfarne raid of 8 June 793 to the Norman conquest of England in 1066.
- Most were also farmers, fishermen, craftsmen and traders, and most written sources about them come from outside Scandinavia, often from victims.
- Their motives are debated: Wikipedia sets out reaction to Charlemagne, exploitation of weak neighbours, and resource or marriage pressures.
- A 2021 Nature study dated wood cut by Norse tools at L'Anse aux Meadows to AD 1021 using a radiocarbon spike from AD 993.
- Wikipedia links the end of the Viking Age to Christianisation and the forming of the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
The Vikings were seafaring people from what is now Denmark, Norway and Sweden who, in Wikipedia's summary, raided, pirated, traded and settled across parts of Europe from the late eighth to the late eleventh centuries — and reached as far as the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Greenland and Newfoundland. Wikipedia also notes that most of them were farmers, fishermen, craftsmen and traders, which is the first correction the popular image needs.
Lindisfarne, 793: how the Viking Age is dated
Wikipedia gives the conventional span as running from the earliest recorded Norse raids in 793 to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. In England, it says, the age "began dramatically on 8 June 793 when Norsemen destroyed the abbey on the island of Lindisfarne". The Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York wrote: "Never before has such an atrocity been seen."
Both end points are English events, which tells you something about the sources. Wikipedia notes that most contemporary documentary sources on the Vikings were written in Christian and Islamic communities outside Scandinavia, "often by authors who had been negatively affected by Viking activity". The Scandinavians themselves left runic inscriptions, usually short and formulaic; the Icelandic sagas were written down in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries and, Wikipedia says, cannot be read literally. Lindisfarne, it adds, demonised perception of the Vikings "for the next twelve centuries", and only in the 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia seriously reassess their artistry and seamanship.
The word itself is debated. Wikipedia lists derivations from an Old English word for settlement, from Old Norse vík (inlet), and a better-attested one from a word for the distance between two shifts of rowers. The Old Norse víkingr barely appears in writing before the twelfth century apart from a few runestones.
Why the raids began: three explanations
Wikipedia calls the motives "a topic of much debate" and sets out several, none of them settled.
- Reaction to Charlemagne. The Franks crushed the Saxons, the Vikings' southern neighbours, in the Saxon Wars of 772–804, with forced baptism. Rudolf Simek is quoted saying "it is not a coincidence if the early Viking activity occurred during the reign of Charlemagne". The story of those wars is in Charlemagne.
- Opportunity. Against Simek, Wikipedia notes raids had occurred sporadically before Charlemagne but "exploded in frequency and size after his death", when his empire fragmented; England was divided, its towns close to the sea or rivers, and western Europe had no organised naval opposition.
- Pressure at home. Historians, Wikipedia says, believe scarce resources or a lack of marriage opportunities were a factor; an older idea traced to Dudo of Saint-Quentin linked raiding to polygyny among wealthy men.
Slaves were part of the answer too. Wikipedia describes the slave trade as an important part of the Viking economy, with captives sold in Scandinavia and shipped east.
Traders and Varangians on the eastern rivers
Raiding is only half the picture. Norse traders plied the Volga with furs, tusks, seal fat and slaves, and Wikipedia lists trading ports including Birka, Hedeby, Kaupang, Jorvik, Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod and Kiev. There is archaeological evidence that Vikings reached Baghdad. The semi-legendary Rurik is said to have taken Novgorod in 862, and his kinsman Oleg captured Kiev in 882; the Rurik dynasty ruled Russia until 1598. Wikipedia also records Soviet historians disputing how far the Rus' state was Norse rather than Slavic.
Scandinavians served Byzantium as mercenaries from at least 839, and in the late tenth century the emperor's Varangian Guard took shape. So many Swedes went that a Västergötland law, Wikipedia notes, barred anyone staying in "Greece" from inheriting. The empire those Scandinavians guarded is the subject of Byzantium: a thousand years after Rome.
Normandy, the Danelaw and English words
In the west, Vikings settled. Wikipedia's Norman Conquest article records that in 911 the Frankish ruler Charles the Simple allowed a group under Rollo to settle in what became Normandy in return for guarding the coast; their descendants were the Normans who conquered England in 1066 — see the Norman Conquest of 1066. In England, the Danelaw covered Scandinavian York, parts of Mercia and East Anglia, and Sweyn Forkbeard (1013–1014) and Cnut the Great (1016–1035) both took the English throne.
Language preserves the settlement. Wikipedia credits Old Norse influence for English place names such as Ormskirk and for grammatical changes including preposition stranding, and notes that in Shetland and Orkney, Old Norse replaced the local languages and became the now-extinct Norn.
Iceland, Greenland and a tree-ring date for Vinland
North Atlantic settlement ran island by island: Norwegian colonisation of Iceland began in the ninth century, a Greenland settlement was founded around 980, and Vikings under Leif Erikson reached Newfoundland. Wikipedia notes the Greenland settlement's demise by the mid-fifteenth century "may have been partly due to climate change".
For a long time the North American date rested on sagas and style. A 2021 paper in Nature by Margot Kuitems and colleagues changed that. It calls L'Anse aux Meadows the only confirmed Norse site in the Americas, and dated three pieces of wood from three different trees, all cut with metal tools that the local Indigenous inhabitants did not make.
Worked example. The team used a spike in atmospheric radiocarbon caused by a cosmic-ray event in AD 993, which shows up in tree rings worldwide. Once the ring holding that spike is found, the paper says, "it simply becomes a matter of counting the number of rings to the waney edge" — the last ring under the bark. All three pieces gave a felling year of 1021, which means the bark edge sits 1021 − 993 = 28 rings after the 993 ring. The authors call 1021 "the only secure calendar date for the presence of Europeans across the Atlantic before the voyages of Columbus". The general method is explained in how historians date events.
How the Viking Age ended
Wikipedia ties the end to change inside Scandinavia. By the late eleventh century royal dynasties legitimised by the Church were consolidating Denmark, Norway and Sweden; dioceses were founded, and Scandinavia's first archbishopric was established at Lund by 1103. The Church held that Christians should not enslave Christians, which, Wikipedia says, took much of the economic incentive out of raiding. Scandinavian kings turned to crusading instead: Sigurd I of Norway sailed for the eastern Mediterranean in 1107 to fight for the Kingdom of Jerusalem — a link to the Crusades.
As for horned helmets, Wikipedia says there is no evidence for them; the costume first appeared in the nineteenth century, a myth taken apart in common history myths, corrected.
Tracing Viking routes on a map
World History Timeline Sim, our own app, includes a world history map showing where major events happened, alongside timelines you can browse by year, era, region, country or category — useful for a story that runs from Kiev to Newfoundland. Time Travel Mode is alternate history: its chains of consequences are simulations, not what happened. Its Play listing presents it as a companion to coursework rather than a replacement, so for evidence such as the sagas or the excavation reports, go to the sources this article cites. It is free on Google Play with ads and optional in-app purchases; other titles are in education and brain training.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
When did the Viking Age begin and end?
Why did the Vikings start raiding other countries?
How do we know the Vikings were in North America?
What does the word Viking originally mean?
Sources
- Vikings (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 (Kuitems et al.) (opens in a new tab)Nature — accessed
- Norman Conquest (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
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