Facts about Viking
Boru, the Irish High King had gracefully allowed the Viking King of Dublin; Sigtrygg Silkbeard, one year to prepare for his coming assault.
The wealthiest Vikings would have worn a sword in addition to his primary arms and have had access to body armor, such as a helmet and a mail hauberk.
Similar to Wagnerian mythology, the romanticism of the heroic Viking ideal appealed to the Germanic supremacist thinkers of Nazi Germany.
Most of the English kingdoms, being in turmoil, could not stand against the Vikings, but Alfred of Wessex managed to keep the Vikings out of his county.
Other chroniclers of Viking history include Adam of Bremen, who wrote "There is much gold here (in Zealand), accumulated by piracy.
The rune stones are important sources in the study of Norse society and early medieval Scandinavia, not only of the 'Viking' segment of the population.
During the first 40 years, the raids were conducted by small, mobile Viking groups.
After reports found that oats can help lower cholesterol, an "oat bran craze" swept the United States in the late 1980s, peaking in 1989, when potato chips with added oat bran were marketed.
The devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island shocked and alerted the royal Courts of Europe to the Viking presence.
More than any other single event, the attack on Lindisfarne demonized perception of the Vikings for the next twelve centuries.
The most significant Viking town in Wales is Swansea, which was founded by the imperialist Viking King of Denmark Sweyn Forkbeard who by 1013 was King of the Danes, Anglo-Saxons and Norwegians.
A Wessex Saxon army led by King Ine was comprehensively destroyed by an alliance of Cornish and Vikings near the Camel estuary at "Hehil," possibly somewhere near modern day Padstow.
To "go Viking" was distinctly different from Norse seaborne missions of trade and commerce.
Many of the fleeing Vikings were drowned in the surf due to their heavy mail coats as they struggled for the safety of their longships; others were pursued and slain further inland.
The Viking presence continued through the reign of Canute the Great (1016-1035), after which a series of inheritance arguments weakened the family reign.
Vikings under Leif Eriksson, heir to Erik the Red, reached North America, with putative expeditions to present-day Canada, Maine and Southeastern Massachusetts, including Cape Cod in the tenth century.
Historical opinion and cultural legacy== In England the Viking Age began dramatically on June 8, 793 when Norsemen destroyed the abbey on the island of Lindisfarne.
Political organizations of the same tradition, such as the Norwegian fascist party, Nasjonal Samling, used an amount of Viking symbolism combined with Roman symbolism and imagery widely in their propaganda and aesthetical approach.
The Vikings were met with stronger resistance than they expected: their leaders were killed, the raiders escaped, only to have their ships beached at Tynemouth and the crews killed by locals.
The Viking Earl Brodir of Man chanced upon Brian's tent as he fled the field.
Another explanation is that the Vikings exploited a moment of weakness in the surrounding regions.
By opening new trade routes in Arabic and Frankish lands, the Vikings profited from international trade by expanding beyond their traditional boundaries.
After the battle, Viking power was broken in Ireland forever, though many settled Norse remained in the cities and prospered greatly with the Irish through trade.
By the reign of Alfonso III Vikings were stifling the already weak threads of sea communications that tied Galicia (to the rest of Europe.
The Viking presence dwindled until 1066, when the Norwegians lost their final battle with the English.
The Vikings lived in a time when numerous societies were engaged in many violent acts, and the doings of the Vikings put into context are not as savage as they seem.
The savage melee between the heavily mailed Norse and the unarmored, yet undaunted Gaels ended in a rout of the Vikings and their Irish allies.
The isles to the north and west of Scotland were heavily colonized by Norwegian Vikings.
West Francia suffered more severely than East Francia during the Viking raids of the ninth century.
Two dukes of Gascony, Seguin II and William I, died defending Bordeaux from Viking assaults.
The Vikings reached south to North Africa and east to Russia and Constantinople, as looters, traders, or mercenaries, known as Varangians.
Viking refers to a member of the Scandinavian seafaring traders, warriors and pirates who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the late eighth century to the eleventh century.
The word Viking was introduced to the English language with romantic connotations in the eighteenth century.
Many of the medieval kings of Norway and Denmark were married to English and Scottish royalty and Viking forces were often a factor in dynastic disputes prior to 1066.
Most Vikings were traders, although some did plunder, often monasteries around Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, as they had a lot of valuables in gold and silver.
The first challenges to anti-Viking sentiments in Britain emerged in the seventeenth century.
The word Viking was popularized, with positive connotations, by Erik Gustaf Geijer in the poem, The Viking, written at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Traditionally, the earliest date given for a Viking raid is 787 when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, three ships from Norway sailed to Portland Bay, in Dorset.
Germanic neopagan groups place emphasis on reconstructing the culture and pre-Christian beliefs of the Germanic peoples, including the Viking era of Norse culture.
The Viking legacy had an impact in parts of Europe, especially the Northern Baltic region, but in no way was the Viking experience particular to Germany.
Until the nineteenth century reign of Queen Victoria, public perceptions in Britain continued to portray Vikings as violent and bloodthirsty.
The motives driving the Viking expansion is a much debated topic in Nordic history.
The Vikings pillaged monasteries on Ireland’s west coast in 795, and then spread out to cover the rest of the coastline.
The Vikings did, however, settle in the south around St. David's, Haverfordwest, and Gower, among other places.
The neighboring Gower Peninsula has many place names of Norse origin (such as Worms Head; worm is the Norse word for dragon, as the Vikings believed that the serpent-shaped island was a sleeping dragon).
In 861, a group of Vikings ransomed the king of Pamplona, whom they had captured the previous year, for 60,000 gold pieces.
The Vikings set up a base to enclose their Viking ships, which the Irish called longphorts.
In 832, a Viking fleet of about 120 ships under Turgesius invaded kingdoms on Ireland’s northern and eastern coasts.
Trade on the Mediterranean Sea was historically at its lowest level when the Vikings initiated their expansion.
In 722, the Cornish allied with Danish Vikings in order to hold Wessex from expanding into Cornwall.
The Vikings were driven out of Ireland for a short period around 900, but returned to Waterford in 914 to found what would become Ireland's first city.
On July 1, 2007, the reconstructed Viking ship Skuldelev 2, renamed Sea Stallion, began a journey from Roskilde, Denmark to Dublin, Ireland.
The Icelandic Vikings called the new found territory "Vinland," after the wild grapes they found growing.
The 200-year Viking influence on European history is filled with tales of plunder and colonization, and the majority of these chronicles came from western witnesses and their descendants.
In 1920, a winged-helmeted Viking was introduced as a radiator cap figure on the new Rover car, marking the start of the cultural rehabilitation of the Vikings in Britain.
The Persian traveler Ibn Rustah (tenth century) described how Swedish Vikings, the Rus, terrorized and enslaved the Slavs.
Silkbeard responded by offering the bed of his mother to several Viking lords from Scandinavia and the British Isles.
Despite images of Viking marauders who live for plunder and warfare, the heart of Viking society was reciprocity, on both a personal, social level, and on a broader political level.
The Vikings also established longphorts in Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Wexford.
A wealthy Viking would have a complete ensemble of a helmet, shield, chainmail shirt, and animal-skin coat, among various other armaments.
The spear and shield were the most basic armaments of the Viking warrior; most would probably also wear a knife of some description, commonly of the seax type.
The vast majority number of runic inscriptions from the Viking period come from Sweden, especially from the tenth and eleventh century.
One common theory posits that the Viking population had outgrown agricultural potential of their Scandinavian homeland.
In 838, a small Viking fleet entered the River Liffey in eastern Ireland, probably led by the chieftain Saxolb (Soxulfr) who was killed later that year.
Finally, the destruction of the Frisian fleet by the Franks afforded the Vikings an opportunity to take over their trade markets.
Viking expansion could also have originated as a means of resistance to forced Christianization, in particular Charlemagne’s persecutions against all the pagan people, who would have had to accept “conversion, or the massacre."
The ship was built using Viking tools, materials and much the same methods as the original ship.
After this interaction, the Irish experienced Viking forces for about 40 years.
The word was taken to refer to romanticized, idealized naval warriors, who had very little to do with the historical Viking culture.
Early modern publications, dealing with what we now call Viking culture, appeared in the sixteenth century, e.g.
Later on, the term, Viking, became synonymous with "naval expedition" or "naval raid," and a vнking was a member of such expeditions.
The expedition also provided valuable new information on Viking longships and society.
The Vikings, however, were not able to set up a Viking state or control Wales, owing to the powerful forces of Welsh kings, and, unlike in Scotland, the aristocracy was relatively unharmed.
The Vikings also took advantage of the civil wars which ravaged the Duchy of Aquitaine in the early years of Charles' reign.
The Vikings settled coastal areas along the Baltic Sea, and along inland rivers in Russian territories such as Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod and along major waterways to the Byzantine Empire.
Vikings also seized and destroyed many villages and territories in Slavic-dominated areas of Eastern Europe.
After 840, the Vikings had several bases in strategic locations throughout Ireland.
During the period of the Vikings, slavery was common throughout Northern Europe, and the fact that many slaves were captured persons was irrelevant in law.
The Irish became accustomed to the Viking presence and culture.
In 865 a large army of Danish Vikings, supposedly led by Ivar, Halfdan and Guthrum arrived in East Anglia.
The period from the earliest recorded raids in the 790s until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is commonly known as the Viking Age of Scandinavian History.
The word disappeared in Middle English, and was reintroduced as Viking during eighteenth century Romanticism (the "Viking revival"), with heroic overtones of "barbarian warrior" or noble savage.
Christianity had an early and growing presence in Scandinavia, and with the rise of centralized authority and the development of more robust coastal defense systems, Viking raids became more risky and less profitable.
Not until the 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin to seriously reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, technological skills and seamanship.
One of the Vikings' largest profit-centers was the slave trade; any group that acts as slave-takers is likely to be viewed with disdain by their victims.
Following a period of thriving trade and settlement, cultural impulses flowed from the rest of Europe to affect Viking dominance.
Wales was not colonized by the Vikings as heavily as eastern England and Ireland.