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Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.
Vikings themselves were expanding; although their motives are unclear, historians believe that scarce resources or a lack of mating opportunities were a factor. [ 91 ] The slave trade was an important part of the Viking economy, with most slaves destined to Scandinavia, although many others were shipped east where they could be sold for large ...
This shows that there were already close contacts between the two peoples, and the Vikings would have been well informed about their targets. [ 14 ] The next recorded attack against the Anglo-Saxons came the following year, in 793, when the monastery at Lindisfarne , an island off England's eastern coast, was sacked by a Viking raiding party on ...
The rediscovery of the Viking past began in Norway during the 19th century when Norway saw a rise in nationalism. Having been in a personal union with Denmark under the Danish king for 400 years and subsequently in the union between Sweden and Norway under the Swedish king, Norwegians started looking back to their Viking Age kings and sagas.
Jomsvikings were forbidden to show fear or to flee in the face of an enemy of equal or inferior strength, but orderly retreat in the face of vastly-outnumbering forces appears to have been acceptable. All spoils of battle were to be equally distributed among the entire brotherhood.
The Vikings trafficked European slaves captured in Viking raids in Europe via Scandinavia to the East in two destinations via present day Russia and the Volga trade route; one to Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate in the Middle East via the Caspian Sea, the Samanid slave trade and Iran; and one to the Byzantine Empire and the Mediterranean via ...
Earth samples proved that the Vikings used slash-and-burn agriculture to cultivate the area and burned down the birch bushes that originally grew there to create pastures. [18] In summary, the excavation results so far allow us to conclude that the living conditions were significantly less favorable than in the eastern settlement.
Vikings, according to Clare Downham in Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland, are "people of Scandinavian culture who were active outside Scandinavia ... Danes, Norwegians, Swedish, Hiberno-Scandinavians, Anglo-Scandinavians, or the inhabitants of any Scandinavian colony who affiliated themselves more strongly with the culture of the colonizer than with that of the indigenous population."