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Originally invented and used by the Norsemen (commonly known as the Vikings) for commerce, exploration, and warfare during the Viking Age, many of the longship's characteristics were adopted by other cultures, like Anglo-Saxons, and continued to influence shipbuilding for centuries.
The average speed of Viking ships varied from ship to ship but lay in the range of 5 to 10 knots (9 to 19 km/h), and the maximum speed of a longship under favorable conditions was from 13 knots (24 km/h) to 17 knots (31 km/h).
Viking long ships besieging Paris in 845, 19th century portrayal. Fascination with the Vikings reached a peak during the so-called Viking revival in the late 18th and 19th centuries as a form of Romantic nationalism. [240] In Britain this was called Septentrionalism, in Germany "Wagnerian" pathos, and in the Scandinavian countries Scandinavism ...
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.
The Vikings were the best naval architects of their day, and the Viking longship was both large and versatile. A longship found at Oseberg, Norway, was 76 feet 6 inches (23.32 m), more than 17 feet (5.18 m) wide, and had a draft of only 3 feet (0.91 m). The shallow draft enabled them to navigate far inland in shallow rivers.
An example of a Northern European late medieval vessel with many characteristics of a carrack is the Danish-Norwegian flagship of King Hans, Gribshunden, which sank off modern-day Sweden in June 1495. It was probably built in the Low Countries near modern-day Rotterdam in 1485, from timber cut in the River Meuse watershed of the Ardennes forest.
Vikings has been a common term for Norsemen in the early medieval period, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering made by Norsemen in Great Britain and Ireland. Leif Ericson was an Icelandic explorer known to be the first European to have landed in North America (presumably in Newfoundland , Canada ).
Vikings understood the advantages of the longships' mobility and used them to a great extent. Viking fleets of over a hundred ships did occur, but these fleets usually only banded together for one single—and temporary—purpose, being composed of smaller fleets each led by its own chieftain, or of different Norse bands.