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The World Of The Vikings

        The Viking age has long been associated with unbridled piracy,
when freebooters swarmed out of the northlands in their longships to
burn and pillage their way across civilized Europe. Modern scholarship
provides evidence this is a gross simplification, and that during this
period much progress was achieved in terms of Scandinavian art and
craftsmanship, marine technology, exploration, and the development of
commerce. It seems the Vikings did as much trading as they did
raiding.

        The title "Viking" encompasses a wide designation of Nordic
people; Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, who lived during a period of
brisk Scandinavian expansion in the middle ages, from approximately
800 to 1100 AD. This name may be derived from the old Norse vik(bay or
creek). These people came from what is now Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway, and had a self-sustaining, agricultural society, where farming
and cattle breeding were supplemented by hunting, fishing, the
extraction of iron and the quarrying of rock to make whetstones and
cooking utensils; some goods, however, had to be traded; salt, for
instance, which is a necessity for man and cattle alike, is an
everyday item and thus would not have been imported from a greater
distance than necessary, while luxury items could be brought in from
farther south in Europe. Their chief export products were, iron,
whetstones, and soapstone cooking pots, these were an essential
contribution to a trade growth in the Viking age.

        The contemporary references we have about the Vikings stem
mainly from sources in western Europe who had bitter experiences with
the invaders, so we're most likely presented with the worst side of
the Vikings. Archaeological excavations have shown evidence of
homesteads, farms, and marketplaces, where discarded or lost articles
tell of a common everyday life. As the Viking period progressed,
society changed; leading Chieftain families accumulated...