Viking Age

The Viking Age is the name of the period between 793 A.D. and 1066 A.D. in Scandinavia, following the Germanic Iron Age and the Vendel Age in Sweden. During this period, the Vikings, Scandinavian warriors, leidangs, and traders, raided and explored large parts of Europe, the Middle East, northern Africa, and even reached North America,(via Iceland and Greenland). The Vikings were tall, savage, and war-like, and often seemed to appear out of nowhere, in their dragon-prowed Viking vessels; and even in small numbers, they terrorized the Christian inhabitants of Medieval Europe for centuries, producing the system of "feudalism" in Europe, which included castles and barons (and was a defense against Viking raids).

Related Topics:
793 - 1066 - Scandinavia - Germanic Iron Age - Vendel Age - Vikings - Leidang - Europe - Middle East - Africa - North America

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The beginning of the Viking Age is commonly given as 793, when Vikings supposedly left a place in Norway called "the Vik" (to go "a-Vik-ing"), and attacked the important British island monastery of Lindisfarne; and the end of the Viking Age is traditionally marked by the failed invasion of England, attempted by Harald Hårdråde, who was defeated by the Saxon king Harold Godwinson (himself an Anglocized Viking), in 1066. Godwinson himself was next defeated that same year by another Viking descendant, William, Duke of Normandy (Normandy was a recent Viking-acquired province in France; hence, the name "Norman-die").

Related Topics:
793 - Lindisfarne - Harald Hårdråde - Harold Godwinson - 1066

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The clinker-built longships used by the Scandinavians were uniquely suited to both deep and shallow waters, and thus extended the reach of Norse raiders, traders and settlers not only along coastlines, but also along the major river valleys of north-western Europe. Rurik also expanded to the east, and founded the first Russian state, with a capital at Novgorod, (which means, "new city"). According to one author, the word "Rus" originally meant "Viking raider", as distinct from the native slavic peoples. Other Norse people, particularly those from the area that is now modern-day Sweden, continued south on Russian rivers to the Black Sea and then on to Constantinople (which had been established in 667 B.C., and was re-named Constantinople in 330 A.D. by Constantine the Great). Whenever these viking ships would run aground in shallow waters, the Vikings would reportedly turn them on their sides and drag them across the land, into deeper waters.

Related Topics:
Longship - Rurik - Russia - Novgorod - Sweden - Black Sea - Constantinople

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

France, "the Kingdom of the Franks" (a Germanic tribe who settled in Gaul, after the fall of the Roman Empire, and whose famous King was Charlemagne, who had re-united the Kingdom by 771), was particularly hard-hit by these raiders, who could sail down the Seine River with near impunity. The region now known as Normandy (after the Viking "Norsemen, men from the north") was profoundly disrupted during this period.

Related Topics:
France - Charlemagne - Seine - Normandy

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 911, the French king, Charles the Simple, was able to make an agreement with the Viking warleader Hrolf Ganger, later called Rollo. Charles gave Hrolf the title of duke, and granted him and his followers possession of Normandy. In return, Hrolf swore fealty to Charles, converted to Christianity, and undertook to defend the northern region of France against the incursions of other Viking groups. The results were, in a historical sense, rather ironic: several generations later, the Norman descendants of these Viking settlers not only thereafter identified themselves as French, but carried the French language, and their variant of the French culture into England in 1066, after the Norman Conquest, and became the ruling aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon England. These Norman Viking descendants, although converting to Christianity, maintained their warlike nature, and eventually adopted chivalry, which joined learning to fight on horseback (like their Moorish enemies in Spain) with becoming knights or "holy warriors" of the Cross. One of their pass-times was jousting, or tournaments of armored knights fighting with lances (the Celtic "lancia") on horse-back.

Related Topics:
Charles the Simple - Hrolf Ganger - Normandy - Fealty - Christianity - Norman - England - Norman Conquest - Jousting

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~