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VIKINGS. Late in the 8th century AD strange ships began appearing in the bays along the coasts of Europe. Some of these ships were quite long for that era. They were strongly built of oak, and from 40 to 60 oarsmen sat on the rowers' benches. Each ship had a single mast with a square sail that was often striped in brilliant colors. Bright shields overlapped along the gunwale. The ships were pointed at each end so that they could go forward or backward without turning around. They had tall curved prows, usually carved in the shapes of dragons.
These dragon ships, as they were often called, usually appeared in a bay at about dawn. As soon as the ships reached the beach, tall blond men jumped out, shouting battle cries. Armed with swords and battle-axes, they attacked the sleeping villagers. They killed many of them, captured some of the youths and maidens, and gathered all the loot that their ships could carry. Then they sailed away.
These marauders, or pirates, came from Scandinavia--what is now Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The people who lived there were Norsemen, or Northmen. Those Norsemen who took part in these swift, cruel raids along the coast were called Vikings. Their expression for this type of warfare was to "go a-viking." Vik in Norse means "harbor" or "bay." The Vikings came to be the most feared raiders of their time and were the only Norsemen with whom most Europeans came in contact. Their name was given to the era that dated from about AD 740 to about 1050--the Viking Age.
Conquests and Settlements
At first these Viking attacks were made by small bands. Later there were more men and more ships, which roamed farther and farther from their homelands. To the north and east they attacked the Lapps, Finns, and Russians. To the west they conquered and held for generations large parts of Britain and Ireland. To the south they occupied northern France. The Norsemen did not actually conquer any country south of France, but their ships sailed along the coasts of Spain and Portugal. They plundered Sicily and the northern shores of Africa and attacked Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
To the west the Vikings did not stop with the British Isles but crossed the Atlantic Ocean to take Iceland away from the Irish monks who had settled there. In 874 they began to colonize Iceland, and during the years that followed, many freedom-loving people came to Iceland as settlers. In about the year 982 Eric the Red sailed westward from Iceland. He landed on the coast of Greenland and gave the island its name. Later he founded the first colony there. His son, Leif Ericson, sometimes called Leif the Lucky, is believed by most historians to have been the first explorer to reach the North American mainland. About the year 1000 he landed at a place that he called Vinland. Vinland was identified as Newfoundland in 1963 when archaeologists uncovered the remains of a Viking settlement at the extreme northern tip of the island. (See also Ericson; Eric the Red.)
While the Vikings were discovering lands and waging war, they were telling each other adventure tales that later were known as sagas, from the Icelandic word for story (see Saga). Poets also were singing the praises of Norse heroes and gods and describing the Norse way of life. In this way the Norsemen preserved major parts of the early history of the Scandinavian countries and of Russia, Germany, Britain, and Ireland.