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Expert sailors and navigators of their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlements and governments in the British Isles, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, and the Baltic coast, as well as along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes across Eastern Europe where they were also known as Varangians.
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.
Vikings, according to Clare Downham in Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland, are "people of Scandinavian culture who were active outside Scandinavia ... Danes, Norwegians, Swedish, Hiberno-Scandinavians, Anglo-Scandinavians, or the inhabitants of any Scandinavian colony who affiliated themselves more strongly with the culture of the colonizer than with that of the indigenous population."
The Great Heathen Army, [a] also known as the Viking Great Army, [1] was a coalition of Scandinavian warriors who invaded England in 865 AD. Since the late 8th century, the Vikings [ b ] had been engaging in raids on centres of wealth, such as monasteries .
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 15 February 2025. Period of European history (about 800–1050) Viking Age picture stone, Gotland, Sweden. Part of a series on Scandinavia Countries Denmark Finland Iceland Norway Sweden History History by country Åland Denmark Faroe Islands Finland Greenland Iceland Norway Scotland Sweden Chronological ...
People taken captive by the Vikings during their raids in Western Europe were likely sold in Islamic Central Asia, a slave trade which was so lucrative that it may have contributed to the Viking raids in Western Europe, which was used by the vikings as a slave supply source for their slave trade with the Muslim world.
The Rus ', [a] also known as Russes, [2] [3] were a people in early medieval Eastern Europe. The scholarly consensus holds that they were originally Norsemen, mainly originating from present-day Sweden, who settled and ruled along the river-routes between the Baltic and the Black Seas from around the 8th to 11th centuries AD.
The Vikings on the Faroe Islands were an agricultural people. They grew barley, which was ground with slate millstones imported from Norway. The most important domestic animals were sheep, and Faroese wool was already an important export at that time. There were also cows and, unlike today, many pigs. The name of the island, Svínoy, testifies ...