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Norse pagan viking age
Norse pagan viking age
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Norse pagan viking age
Norse pagan viking age
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Vikings were a group of Germanic sea dwellers who traded with and raided towns all across Europe out of their Scandinavian homeland. During the late 8th to 11th centuries they ruled all of Europe through their barbaric ways. Even other cultures outside of Europe saw the barbaric ways in which the Vikings acted towards the villages that they encountered. One such case of this was a Muslim Chronicler, Ibn Fadlan, recounting of the Vikings as “[T]he filthiest of God’s creatures.” While they were very savage in their actions, this very trait gave them the ability to be able to roam through and ravage an entire town fully unopposed and within a very miniscule timeframe.
When you think of Vikings you think of the blood thirsty pillages who plundered villages and killed many innocents. But the info presented shows that the Vikings were like every other colony back then trying to adapt to the changing world and survive in it. For example document seven says that the Vikings could not keep up with the growing population. This caused food shortages to be common problem which led into Viking raids. This would allow them to keep up with the demand for food.
The early Vikings, lived in the years 793 to 1066 in their homeland of Scandinavia and were a very sea based civilization, known for their seafaring skills such as their boats and navigational prowess. However, they also practiced agriculture, but eventually over worked the land. This is just one of the motivations for the Vikings to expand into European lands, as well as to retaliate against them due to previous invasions made by
History of the Viking Age: Expansion and Assimilation One day off the coast of England in 793 C.E. off the misty shores of an isolate monastery on the island of Lindisfarne emerged monstrous ships filled with grotesquely clad demons come to slaughter all: the Vikings had arrived. The Vikings were Nordic people from Norway, Denmark, and Sweden who terrorized much of Western Europe three centuries and whose influence extended from Greenland and Iceland to Russia and the Byzantine Empire. Though there is debate over when the Viking Age specifically occurred, it is generally agreed that this period lasted from the end of the eighth century to the middle of the eleventh century ( ). Regardless, this was a time characterized by brutal raids and concerted incursions into Western European countries, especially Ireland, France, and various English kingdoms, by a relatively secluded and remote group of barbaric Northmen.
Vikings helped grow Feudalism in many ways. Because of their attacks and raids the people of Europe learned and started the system of feudalism. “The Viking invasions had forced European society to get smaller so it could react to the threat created by the Vikings.” They helped local noblemen become more powerful than ever and that was a great thing. The shift from an individual king to multiple local lords changed europe for a long time.
The Vikings tended to try to take over any place that was making plenty of money, and during the eighth century, that was the land of the Slavs. The Slavs were able to defeat the Vikings, making them give up on ruling the region. However, the Slavs soon spent so much time fighting each other that they realized that they were better off with the Vikings as rulers! Known as the __Varangians__, these Vikings settled as rulers, not conquerors, and intermarried with the Slavs.
One of the first raids they did was in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle around AD 787. The Vikings invaded the western and eastern Europe, from Denmark, Norway, Sweden. They as well settled in Faroe Island, Ireland, Iceland and many more places. Almost all the kingdoms had fallen to The Vikings in the year AD 874. The Vikings were more pagans, not by any means Christians like most people living in the Britain at the time.
They penetrate countless river systems of Western Europe and attack settlements. They keep on discovering new islands in the North Atlantic and reached Iceland in 770 AD (Love, 2006, p. 4). It was then largely an inhabitant land with a small population of Irish monks. However, they Vikings moved further and reached Greenland and North America in the 10th century. They, later on, make efforts to establish settlements in the modern day L'Anse aux Meadows, which is now a historic site of archaeological importance in Canada.
In today's World Vikings aren’t thought highly of, in many regards other than their ability to fight. And are usually considered to be dirty warriors and pirates with an undeveloped culture. Who had no allegiance or laws to follow. But the Vikings were much more than their stereotype shows them to be. They were also explorers, and entrepreneurs, opening new trade, and spreading Scandinavian Culture across Europe.
[S]avage and barbarous peoples, which are said to have sprung forth in various different ways from the island of Scanza (Scandinavis). . .” (Christiansen 1998). It is in this sentiment that one finds Norse Mythology to be the distinguishing feature of the Viking Era. Christians of the time’s perceptions of the Vikings, archeological relics being found in the 21st Century, and evidence that this
Viking expansion in the early 8th to the late 11th century caused significant short and long-term impacts on Europe. One short-term impact of Viking expansion was the bloody raids that took place, allowing trade routes to be set up which distributed money through Europe,, the long-term impact of Norse words and their integration into modern-day languages, and the shipping technology that grant insight into aqua dynamics and allowed the evolution of the boat and for Vikings to travel quickly around vast bodies of water. Through our knowledge of Viking expansion, it is clear that they have had both short and long term impacts on Europe. A major short-term impact of Viking expansion was an increase in raiding and trading within Europe.
Viking boats and ships were greatly advanced in the late 700’s AD. At this time people from Norway and Denmark were able to sail the open sea. There greatest travelling was done by their beloved long boats. These boats were good for sailing the high seas all the way to other places were that the Vikings could release the wrath and be able to attack, steal the run quickly. It was a boat that evolved from one-man canoes of the Scandinavian Stone Age, through wood-built ships of 200BC into the recognizable long boats of the 4th century AD.
They were followed by the French, Dutch and Spanish colonization. If we assume that the Vikings were still in America they might stop all these colonization as they would stop the diseases, and that would lead them to able to find gold instead of the British that came. So that would make their wealth and trade extends to a larger point and further than what it was. Therefore their popularity would extend and they would be more mentioned between people in a decent way than they are now. Furthermore the Vikings would stop the French from settling a good relationship with the Indians and they won 't be married to them.
The Viking expansion started in 793 with the first raid and ended around 1050. The division of the geographical core area is important, because this division also separates Vikings in the way took part in the expansion Norwegians travelled west- and southwest to colonise. The Danes went southwest for their conquests and the Swedes proceeded east- and south-eastward for their raiding and trading. Raiding and trading routes Raiding and trading
Exploration during the Vikings era was driven by the need to survive. The areas where they originally came from were barren, and in order to survive they needed to find an area with a surplus of food. This is one of the reasons the Vikings did not receive as much attention for their discovery of the “New World”. Another reason is that the Vikings did not spread the new found wealth of the areas they discovered. They came searching as settlers, not as explorers.