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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.
Reenactment of a Viking landing in L'Anse aux Meadows. Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories are speculative theories which propose that visits to the Americas, interactions with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or both, were made by people from elsewhere prior to Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Caribbean in 1492. [1]
Greenland colonists used timber for their boats and homes, so they likely made many unrecorded trips south for wood. [ 44 ] [ 45 ] Microscopic analysis of the materials used at 5 Norse sites on Greenland, shows that many families relied on driftwood and the sparse local trees, while the larger farms sourced lumber from Europe and North America.
They are generally referred to as Vikings, [1] [2] but some scholars debate whether the term Viking [a] represented all Scandinavian settlers or just those who used violence. [ 4 ] [ b ] At the start of the early medieval period, Scandinavian kingdoms had developed trade links reaching as far as southern Europe and the Mediterranean, giving ...
Researchers believe they have reliable evidence that shows Vikings beat Christopher Columbus to the Americas by about 500 years. A Stunning Discovery Proves That Vikings Reached the Americas ...
At one point, a group of Rus Vikings went so far south that, after briefly being bodyguards for the Byzantine emperor, they attacked the Byzantine city of Constantinople. [12] Vikings also voyaged to Iran [13] [page needed] and Arabia. [14] They were the first Europeans to reach North America, briefly settling in Newfoundland (Vinland).
Vikings were well-traveled, as shown by 50 skeletons found in Denmark. Their graves contained goods from other lands, suggesting international trade.
The Norse Vikings had a big, expansive and planned out trade network.Trade took place on a gold level and over short and long distances. Improvements in ship technology and cargo capabilities made trade and the transport of goods much easier, [4] [1]: 97 especially as Europe began to shift to a bulk economy.