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The motives driving the Viking expansion are a topic of much debate. The concept that Vikings may have originally started sailing and raiding due to a need to seek out women from foreign lands was expressed in the 11th century by historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his semi-imaginary History of The Normans.
Although the idea of Norse voyages to, and a colony in, North America was discussed by Swiss scholar Paul Henri Mallet in his book Northern Antiquities (English translation 1770), [39] the sagas first gained widespread attention in 1837 when the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn revived the idea of a Viking presence in North America. [40]
Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.
During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a large-scale expansion in all directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers and warriors have commonly been referred to as Vikings. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England distinguish between Norse Vikings ...
Statue of "Big Ole the Viking" in Alexandria, Minnesota, proclaiming the city the "Birthplace of America," based on an assumed authenticity of the Kensington Stone. The Kensington Runestone is a slab of greywacke stone covered in runes that was discovered in Western Minnesota , United States, in 1898.
Vinland was the name given to part of North America by the Icelandic Norseman Leif Eriksson, about 1000 AD. It was also spelled Winland, [4] as early as Adam of Bremen's Descriptio insularum Aquilonis ("Description of the Northern Islands", ch. 39, in the 4th part of Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum), written circa 1075.
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North Germanic peoples, Nordic peoples [1] and in a medieval context Norsemen, [2] were a Germanic linguistic group originating from the Scandinavian Peninsula. [3] They are identified by their cultural similarities, common ancestry and common use of the Proto-Norse language from around 200 AD, a language that around 800 AD became the Old Norse language, which in turn later became the North ...