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 by the melting glaciers of the last ice age. 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 the Vikings were, the weapons they used and the ships that they sailed.
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. The word Viking meant pirate.
Vikings were known for their raiding and pillaging of settlements across Europe
during the ninth century.
For most of the last one thousand years, our impressions of who these
Vikings and how they lived have been based on writings like those of the
Lindesfarne monk, who portrayed them in the worst possible way, and on stories
written by thirteenth century Viking poets. In more recent time, books, movies
and cartoons have kept the barbaric image alive. But, the archaeological
evidence being uncovered in Europe and in western Russia in the past hundred
years is helping to change this and create a more positive image of these
northerners.
While raiding cities, towns and monasteries may have been a quick and
sometimes easy way to get rich, it was not the only means that the Vikings
supported themselves. For a majority of Vikings, the resources they needed to
survive came not from pillaging, but from the seas, the fields and the forests
around them. Based on archaeological finds such as sickles, picks, hoes and
ploughshares and the preserved remains of animals and plants, we now know
the Vikings were very skilled craftsmen and highly successful farmers. And as
seafarers, they cut...
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