Some General Information About Vikings

The Viking Age - 800 A.D - 1050 A.D

The period between 800 A.D to 1050 A.D is named the Viking Age in Scandinavia. This period is perhaps the most wellknown and glorified period in the Scandinavian history. During a period of almost 300 years the Vikings from the three Scandinavian countries Sweden, Norway and Denmark was the dominant factor in large parts of WestEurope. The Vikings were good seamen and without detailed maps and other "necessary" things for a skipper of today, they really did a lot of long distance journeys.

They followed the westEuropean coast down to the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of north Africa. Westward the travelled to Shetlands, Orkneys, Faroes and they discovered Iceland and Greenland. They even found the continent of Northamerica many houndred years before Christofer Columbus did. Via the big rivers in Poland and Russia they travelled to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and even so far away as Greece and Bagdad in Iraq. In north they passed the North Cape and find their way to the Kola Peninsula. Even today this is really some long distance journeys.

Their journeys turned out to be commercial trade routes and was very importent for the whole Europe during that time. In Scandinavia they founded at least three importent small towns with a lot of trading from all over the world. It was Birka in Sweden just outside of Stockholm, Hedeby in Danmark and Kaupang in Norway. Today it's only Birka that can show the non-archaelogist something worth seeing. There have been modern excavations there during the last years and today we know a lot how the town looked liked. Another importent tradingmarket was Gotland in the middle of the Baltic Sea.

They were good warriors and due they had extremly fast ships and used them more or less like the amfieber military boots of today. They also brought horses on their ships and used them for cavalry attacks and their military operations were extremly successful and people along the coast feared them. Many of the big cities in Europe have had their Vikingraids; Hamburg, Paris, Sevilla, Lisbon and Pisa to mention some of them. Perhaps these military raids are the part most people associates Vikings with. However, they were not only warriors and roughly you can divid their exploits in at least three different areas; the Warrior, theTraveling Salesman and the Colonizer.

The Myth

One of the visuals below represents a true picture of a viking, the other one's are just myths. Which of the visuals is the correct one you think? Scroll down a bit and you will get the answer.

Well no cheating?

The Answer

The third one is the correct one. Were you right? The truth is that no viking ever had horned helmets. There is not a single finding-place with horned helmets from the Viking Age Period. However there are some helmets with horn on them but those helmets are more than thousand years older than the Viikings.

So why do eight of ten people believe that the Vikings had horned helmets? Well, perhaps there is a historical point of view that probably is very close to the truth. One of the very first viking raid, that we for sure know have happened, was the attack of a little monastery in Lindesfarne. The monastery was situated on a Holy Island just outside Northumberland not so far away from boarder between England and Scotland today. According to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle the raid was done 793 A.D. actually some years before the Viking Age Period began (800 A.D - 1050 A.D). Churches and monasteries were easy targets to attack and the Vikings stole the valuables in them. They killed monks, stole cattles, burned down houses and captures people and sold them as slaves. People around the coast really feared the Vikings and as they were not strong enought to fight them back the monks and priesthood started to pray about protection from the devils from the north. And probably this is the starting point of the myth about horned Vikings. As you know the devil is assumed to have horns on his head and here you are.

The Religion

In the first part of the Viking Age Period the Vikings had their own religion and believed in their heathen deities. Missionaries from the Christian countries outside of Scandianavia did their best to convert them into Christianity but it didn't work out so well. The first country to convert into Christianity was Denmark approximately 960 AD. Around 960 AD the danish king Harald Bluetooth raised the runestone at Jellinge in Denmark after his father and mother. The last part of the inscription tell us he made the danish Christians. However probably a major or less part of the danish people still believed in their old gods.

In Norway and espacially in Sweden there was a ongoing fight between the religions for many years. To show which religion you believed in, people started to wear Christian cross or a Thors amulet as necklaces. This fight between religions could also be seen in the ornamentics of the runestones. The people whom had converted to Christanianity often put a cross on their runestones. The inscriptions sometimes tell us that god should help the deceased person better than he deserved. The parents had retained heathen but their children had converted into Christianity.