Who Were the Vikings?

The people of medieval Scandinavia - Norway, Sweden and Denmark -  were known as “the Vikings”. Actually, Viking was not what they were, it was what they did. More properly they were known as “Norse” - men from the north. In the summer months, while waiting for their crops to grow, they went Viking (= travelling), sometimes to trade, sometimes to raid. The purpose was simply to gain wealth. In their travels, they might cover huge distances. • The Swedes went east to Russia then on to what is now Istanbul. Russia is named after the “Rus”, an old Norse word for “the men who row”. • The Danes went south and west to raid and settle in France and England. The Normans are “the North men” who settled in France and developed their distinctive knightly culture. • The Norwegians travelled north and west to Scotland, Ireland and the islands in between, even travelling as far as north America!

Why Did They Travel So Much?

Food was a prime motivation for the Norse. In some cases it was a shortage of farm land. In others the soil was too poor to provide sufficient crops. The fact that the pagan Norse would find large quantities of gold and silver artefacts in churches and monasteries in Christian Europe, all completely unguarded, was also significant. The Norwegians had a particular problem in that cultivatable land was scarce and as each generation split their farms among their descendants, the farms got smaller and less able to support a family. Eventually, many realised that it was a necessity to find somewhere else to live. The Norwegian kings found it ever more difficult to keep control over their subjects abroad. In and around Scotland for example, local Norse kings began setting up areas of authority independently of the King of Norway, such as the Jarldom of Orkney and the Kingdom of Mann. Disputes between these “authorities” meant that Norse raided each other as much as they did non-Norse victims.