Vikings
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Vikings is the modern name given to seafaring Norse pirates from southern Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden) who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe.<ref name="EB_Viking">{{
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}}{{#if: Viking, also called Norseman or Northman, member of the Scandinavian seafaring warriors who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the 9th to the 11th century and whose disruptive influence profoundly affected European history. These pagan Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish warriors were...
| “Viking, also called Norseman or Northman, member of the Scandinavian seafaring warriors who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the 9th to the 11th century and whose disruptive influence profoundly affected European history. These pagan Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish warriors were...”
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}}{{#if: Viking society, which had developed by the 9th century, included the peoples that lived in what are now Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and, from the 10th century, Iceland
| “Viking society, which had developed by the 9th century, included the peoples that lived in what are now Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and, from the 10th century, Iceland”
}}</ref><ref name="Roesdahl, pp. 9–22">Roesdahl, pp. 9–22.</ref> They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and North America. In some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Norse homelands as a collective whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the Early medieval history of Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Estonia, and Kievan Rus'.<ref>Brink 2008</ref>
Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlements and governments in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, the Baltic coast, and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in what is now European Russia, Belarus<ref>Archaeologists find evidence of Vikings’ presence in Belarus Template:Webarchive. Lepel Regional Executive Committee.</ref> and Ukraine<ref>Ancient Ukraine: Did Swedish Vikings really found Kyiv Rus? Template:Webarchive Business Ukraine.</ref> (where they were also known as Varangians). The Normans, Norse-Gaels, Rus' people, Faroese and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. The Vikings also voyaged to Constantinople, Iran,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and Arabia.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> They were the first Europeans to reach North America, briefly settling in Newfoundland (Vinland). While spreading Norse culture to foreign lands, they simultaneously brought home slaves, concubines and foreign cultural influences to Scandinavia, profoundly influencing the genetic<ref name="Margaryan">Margaryan, A., Lawson, D.J., Sikora, M. et al., "Population genomics of the Viking world", Nature, 585, 390–396 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2688-8. "...we see substantial ancestry from elsewhere in Europe entering Scandinavia during the Viking Age..."</ref> and historical development of both. During the Viking Age the Norse homelands were gradually consolidated from smaller kingdoms into three larger kingdoms: Denmark, Norway and Sweden.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The Vikings spoke Old Norse and made inscriptions in runes. For most of the period they followed the Old Norse religion, but later became Christians. The Vikings had their own laws, art and architecture. Most Vikings were also farmers, fishermen, craftsmen and traders. Popular conceptions of the Vikings often strongly differ from the complex, advanced civilisation of the Norsemen that emerges from archaeology and historical sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to emerge in the 18th century; this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival.<ref>Wawn 2000</ref><ref name="langer">Johnni Langer, "The origins of the imaginary viking", Viking Heritage Magazine, Gotland University/Centre for Baltic Studies. Visby (Sweden), n. 4, 2002.</ref> Perceived views of the Vikings as violent, piratical heathens or as intrepid adventurers owe much to conflicting varieties of the modern Viking myth that had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations of the Vikings are typically based on cultural clichés and stereotypes, complicating modern appreciation of the Viking legacy. These representations are rarely accurate—for example, there is no evidence that they wore horned helmets, a costume element that first appeared in Wagnerian opera.
See also
- Faroese people
- Geats
- Gotlander
- Gutasaga
- Oeselians
- Proto-Norse language
- Scandinavian prehistory
- Swedes (Germanic tribe)
- Ushkuiniks, Novgorod's privateers
- Viking raid warfare and tactics
