Northmen, The Viking Saga 793-1241 AD

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A note about spellings.

For the benefit of non-academic readers, in this book I have used established modern English or Scandinavian spellings for place-names and personal names. However, I have not thought it appropriate to commission anglicisms where none exist already and in these cases Old Norse forms have been used.

SCANDINAVIA

ENGLAND AND IRELAND

WESTERN EUROPE c. 800

ICELAND

THE VINLAND VOYAGES

THE EASTERN ROUTES

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON THE VIKINGS

The Vikings were an unprecedented phenomenon in European history, not for any technological, military or cultural innovation that they contributed to – in most respects they were really rather backward and even their shipbuilding methods were conservative – but for the vast expanse of their horizons. No previous Europeans had ever seen so much of the world as the Vikings did. From their Scandinavian homelands, Vikings sailed east down the great rivers of Russia crossing the Black Sea to Constantinople and the Caspian Sea to reach Baghdad. In the west, Vikings were active along the entire coastline of Western Europe, founding settlements in Scotland, England, Ireland and France. Vikings even penetrated the Mediterranean to attack Italy and North Africa. Other Vikings crossed the Atlantic, leaving settlements along the way in the Faeroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, to become the first Europeans known to have set foot in North America. It is these far-flung connections, and the daring spirit that created them, that give the Vikings their enduring appeal.

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