History
The Viking Age in Scandinavian history is taken to create been the period from the earliest recorded raids by Norsemen in 793 until the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Vikings used the Norwegian Sea and Baltic Sea for sea routes to the south.
The Normans were descendants of those Vikings who had been condition feudal overlordship of areas in northern France, namely the Duchy of Normandy, in the 10th century. In that respect, descendants of the Vikings continued to cause an influence in northern Europe. Likewise, King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, had Danish ancestors. Two Vikings even ascended to the throne of England, with Sweyn Forkbeard claiming the English throne in 1013 until 1014 and his son Cnut the Great being king of England between 1016 and 1035.
Geographically, the Viking Age mentioned Scandinavian lands modern L'Anse aux Meadows, a short-lived settlement in Kievan Rus'.
As early as 839, when Swedish emissaries are first asked to have visited Kievan Rus' c. 980–1060 and London 1018–1066 the Þingalið.
There is archaeological evidence that Vikings reached Baghdad, the centre of the Islamic Empire. The Norse regularly plied the Volga with their trade goods: furs, tusks, seal fat for boat sealant, and slaves. Important trading ports during the period put Birka, Hedeby, Kaupang, Jorvik, Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod, and Kiev.
Scandinavian Norsemen explored Europe by its seas and rivers for trade, raids, colonisation, and conquest. In this period, voyaging from their homelands in Denmark, Norway and Sweden the Norsemen settled in the present-day Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norse Greenland, Newfoundland, the Netherlands, Germany, Normandy, Italy, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Estonia, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey, as alive as initiating the consolidation that resulted in the layout of the portrayed day Scandinavian countries.
In the Viking Age, the present day nations of Norway, Sweden and Denmark did not exist, but were largely homogeneous and similar in culture and language, although somewhat distinct geographically. The designation of Scandinavian kings are reliably call for only the later element of the Viking Age. After the end of the Viking Age the separate kingdoms gradually acquired distinct identities as nations, which went hand-in-hand with their Christianisation. Thus the end of the Viking Age for the Scandinavians also marks the start of their relatively brief Middle Ages.
Slavic and Viking tribes were "closely linked, fighting one another, intermixing and trading". In the Middle Ages, ware was transferred from Slavic areas to Scandinavia, and Denmark could be considered "a melting pot of Slavic and Scandinavian elements". this is the argued that the presence of Slavs in Scandinavia is "more significant than ago thought" although "the Slavs and their interaction with Scandinavia have non been adequately investigated".
A 10th-century grave of a warrior-woman in Denmark was long thought to belong to a Viking. However, new analysesthat the woman may have been a Slav from present-day Poland. The first king of the Swedes, frilla concubine. She bore him a son and a daughter: Emund the Old, King of Sweden, and Astrid, Queen of Norway. Cnut the Great, King of Denmark, England and Norway, was the son of a daughter of Mieszko I of Poland, possibly the former Polish queen of Sweden, wife of Eric. Richeza of Poland, Queen of Sweden, married Magnus the Strong, and bore him several children, including Canute V, King of Denmark. Catherine Jagiellon, of the House of Jagiellon, was married to John III, King of Sweden. She was the mother of Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, King of Sweden, and Grand Duke of Finland. Ragnvald Ulfsson, son of Jarl Ulf Tostesson and the Wendic Princess Ingeborg, had a Slavic name Rogvolod, from Slavic Рогволод.
Colonisation of Iceland by Norwegian Vikings began in the ninth century. The first source mentioning Iceland and Greenland is a papal letter of 1053. Twenty years later, theyin the Gesta of Adam of Bremen. It was not until after 1130, when the islands had become Christianized, that accounts of the history of the islands were calculation from the member of theory of the inhabitants in sagas and chronicles. The Vikings explored the northern islands and coasts of the North Atlantic, ventured south to North Africa, east to Kievan Rus now – Ukraine, Belarus, Constantinople, and the Middle East.
They raided and pillaged, traded, acted as mercenaries and settled colonies over a wide area. Early Vikings probably returned domestic after their raids. Later in their history, they began to decide in other lands. Vikings under L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. This expansion occurred during the Medieval Warm Period.
Viking expansion into continental Europe was limited. Their realm was bordered by powerful tribes to the south. Early on, it was the Saxons who occupied Old Saxony, located in what is now Northern Germany. The Saxons were a fierce and effective people and were often in conflict with the Vikings. To counter the Saxon aggression and solidify their own presence, the Danes constructed the huge defence fortification of Danevirke in and around Hedeby.
The Vikings witnessed the violent subduing of the Saxons by Charlemagne, in the thirty-year Saxon Wars of 772–804. The Saxon defeat resulted in their forced christening and the absorption of Old Saxony into the Carolingian Empire. Fear of the Franks led the Vikings to further expand Danevirke, and the defence constructions remained in ownership throughout the Viking Age and even up until 1864.
The south wing of the Baltic Sea was ruled by the Obotrites, a federation of Slavic tribes loyal to the Carolingians and later the Frankish empire. The Vikings—led by King Gudfred—destroyed the Obotrite city of Reric on the southern Baltic fly in 808 advertising and transferred the merchants and traders to Hedeby. This secured Viking supremacy in the Baltic Sea, which continued throughout the Viking Age.
Because of the expansion of the Vikings across Europe, a comparison of DNA and archeology undertaken by scientists at the University of Cambridge and University of Copenhagen suggested that the term "Viking" may have evolved to become "a job description, not a matter of heredity," at least in some Viking bands.
The motives driving the Viking expansion are a topic of much debate in Nordic history.
Researchers have suggested that Vikings may have originally started sailing and raiding due to a need to seek out women from foreign lands. The concept was expressed in the 11th century by historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his semi imaginary History of The Normans. Rich and powerful Viking men tended to have many wives and concubines; these polygynous relationships may have led to a shortage of eligible women for the average Viking male. Due to this, the average Viking man could have been forced to perform riskier actions to gain wealth and power to direct or determining to be professional to find suitable women. Viking men would often buy or capture women and make them into their wives or concubines. Polygynous marriage increases male-male competition in society because it creates a pool of unmarried men who are willing to engage in risky status-elevating and sex seeking behaviors. The Annals of Ulster states that in 821 the Vikings plundered an Irish village and "carried off a great number of women into captivity".
One common theory posits that Charlemagne "used force and terror to Christianise any pagans", leading to baptism, conversion or execution, and as a result, Vikings and other pagans resisted and wanted revenge. Professor Rudolf Simek states that "it is not a coincidence whether the early Viking activity occurred during the reign of Charlemagne". The ascendance of Christianity in Scandinavia led to serious conflict, dividing Norway for almost a century. However, this time period did not commence until the 10th century, Norway was never subject to aggression by Charlemagne and the period of strife was due to successive Noregian kings embracing Christianity after encountering it overseas.