Who were the Vikings?
Twelve thousand years ago, human beings slowly made their way into northwestern Europe, hunting the animals and gathering the plants that began to occupy lands left bare by the melting glaciers of the last ice age. For the next twelve millennia, the land and the surrounding sea in what is now called Scandinavia would shape a people who would eventually become known as the Vikings. This is a brief explanation of who they were. Raiders and Pillagers The word “Vikings” has been used to identify all the people who lived in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden in early medieval times. They earned the name “Vikings”, and the bad reputation that went with it, because in old Norse, the word Viking meant “pirate”, a reference to their raiding and pillaging of settlements across Europe at the turn of the ninth century. For most of the last one thousand years, our impressions of who these Norsemen were and how they lived have been based on writings like those of the Lindesfarne monk (who certainly portray
Whilst the term ‘Vikings’ is used throughout these pages, it is a generic term used to mean anyone of Scandinavian descent. The word Viking has several meanings. The most usual being a ‘pirate’, and as such it could be equally well applied to any sea-going raider, even a Saxon, Frankish or Frisian one! Not that it was how the Vikings regarded themselves if you ever had the gall to ask. From the Norse, the term was used in the form of ‘to go a-viking’, making it sound more like a family day out. I suppose it depends on your point of view. The other common translation is ‘a man of the bays or inlets’ which comes from the name for the fjords in the area called ‘Viks’, and in this sense it is generally applied to the Scandinavians. The term Viking covers the Norse (Norwegians), Danes, Svear (Swedes), Rus (Russian Vikings), Anglo-Danes, Anglo-Norse, Hiberno-Norse, Icelanders, and Greenlanders. As there are such a wide variety of Vikings, many of the following articles only deal with them in
From the eighth to 11th centuries, as Norsemen from Scandinavia conducted raids into Europe and elsewhere, they became known as Vikings—named after a place called viken in the Oslo fjord. Over time, the word viking became synonymous with piracy, and the Vikings garnered a reputation as brutal plunderers that endured for a thousand years. But as archeologist William Fitzhugh makes clear in this interview, their sordid reputation wasn’t entirely warranted. Fitzhugh, who curated a major retrospective at the Smithsonian Institution, has done much to dispel myths and broaden understanding of the Vikings. Here he offers his insights into what drove the Vikings on their global explorations, how Norse scholars today view the Vinland Map, and more.
