The Viking Age

Between roughly 800 and 1050 CE, the Middle Ages saw the rise of the Viking Age, a period when Norse people—often called Vikings—conducted widespread raiding, colonization, conquest, and trade across Europe and even reached North America. This era covers not just Scandinavia itself but any region where Scandinavians established significant settlements. While only a minority of these Scandinavians were actually pirates in the strict sense, the term "Vikings" is commonly used for all of them.

Setting out by sea from what are now Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the Norse settled in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, the Baltic coast, and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in Eastern Europe, where they were also called Varangians. They briefly established a settlement in Newfoundland, making them the first Europeans to reach North America. From these colonies emerged groups such as the Norse-Gaels, Normans, Rus' people, Faroese, and Icelanders. The Vikings founded several kingdoms and earldoms, including the Kingdom of the Isles, Orkney, York and the Danelaw, Dublin, Normandy, and Kievan Rus'. During this period, the Norse homelands themselves consolidated into larger kingdoms, and the short-lived North Sea Empire encompassed much of Scandinavia and Britain. In 1021, Vikings reached North America—a feat whose exact date was only confirmed a millennium later.

Several factors fueled this expansion. The Vikings were attracted by the growth of wealthy towns, monasteries, and weak kingdoms abroad. They may also have been pushed from home by overpopulation, scarce good farmland, and political turmoil from Norway’s unification. The aggressive expansion of the Carolingian Empire and the forced conversion of neighboring Saxons to Christianity might have played a role as well. Innovations in sailing allowed them to travel farther and longer than before.

Our knowledge of the Viking Age comes largely from primary sources written by those they encountered, along with archaeology, supplemented by secondary sources like the Icelandic Sagas.

In England, the Viking attack on June 8, 793, which destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne—a learning center off Northumberland’s northeast coast—is traditionally seen as the start of the Viking Age. Judith Jesch has argued that the beginning might be pushed back to 700–750, since the Lindisfarne raid was unlikely the first, and archaeological evidence suggests earlier contacts between Scandinavia and the British Isles. Early raids were probably small-scale but grew during the 9th century. During the Lindisfarne attack, monks were killed, drowned, or taken as slaves along with church treasures, inspiring the unverified prayer: “Free us from the fury of the Northmen, Lord.” Three Viking ships had landed in Weymouth Bay four years earlier (though a scribal error in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates this to 787 instead of 789), but that incident may have been a failed trading expedition rather than a raid. Lindisfarne was different. The devastation was reported by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York, who wrote that such terror had never been seen in Britain before. Vikings were depicted as purely violent and bloodthirsty by their enemies; Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle around 1300 describes them as “wolves among sheep” in East Anglia.

The first challenges to these negative portrayals in Britain emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly works on the Viking Age reached only a small audience there, while linguists traced Viking origins in rural idioms and proverbs. New dictionaries and grammars of Old Icelandic allowed Victorian scholars to read the Icelandic Sagas directly. In Scandinavia, 17th-century scholars like Thomas Bartholin, Ole Worm, and Olaus Rudbeck were the first to use runic inscriptions and sagas as primary historical sources. During the Enlightenment and Nordic Renaissance, historians such as Thormodus Torfæus, Ludvig Holberg, and Olof von Dalin adopted a more rational and pragmatic approach. By the late 18th century, although the sagas remained important sources, the Viking Age was again seen as a barbaric and uncivilized period in Nordic history. Scholars outside Scandinavia did not begin to reassess Viking achievements—recognizing their artistry, technology, and seamanship—until the 1890s.

The Vikings who invaded western and eastern Europe were mainly pagans from what is now Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. They also settled in the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Iceland, parts of Scotland (Caithness, the Hebrides, and the Northern Isles), Greenland, and Canada. Their North Germanic language, Old Norse, became the basis for modern Scandinavian languages. By 801, a strong central authority seems to have formed in Jutland, and the Danes began looking beyond their borders for land, trade, and plunder. In Norway, mountainous terrain and fjords created strong natural boundaries, keeping communities independent. By 800, about 30 small kingdoms existed there. The sea was the easiest way to communicate between Norwegian settlements.