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Norse clothing. In modern scholarship, Vikings is a common term for attacking Norsemen, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering by Norsemen in the British Isles, but it was not used in this sense at the time. In Old Norse and Old English, the word simply meant 'pirate'. [15] [16] [17]
The Normans, Norse-Gaels, Rus, Faroese, and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. 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]
Words of Old Norse origin have entered the English language, primarily from the contact between Old Norse and Old English during colonisation of eastern and northern England between the mid 9th to the 11th centuries (see also Danelaw). Many of these words are part of English core vocabulary, such as egg or knife. There are hundreds of such ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 17 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 ...
Best known are the Norse sagas, the Icelanders' sagas and the mythological literature, but there also survives a large body of religious literature, translations into Old Norse of courtly romances, classical mythology, and the Old Testament, as well as instructional material, grammatical treatises and a large body of letters and official documents.
The earliest known usage of the Old Norse term heiðinn is in the poem Hákonarmál; its uses here indicates that the arrival of Christianity has generated consciousness of Old Norse religion as a distinct religion. [17] Old Norse religion has been classed as an ethnic religion, [18] and as a "non-doctrinal community religion". [13]
In the 9th century, Danish Vikings gained control of a part of eastern England, which became known as the Danelaw. [7] England was the part of Europe most heavily subjected to Viking attacks, and it is likely that the Scandinavians would have gained control of all of England if not for the successful resistance of Alfred the Great. [85]
The story's two protagonists – feuding spacemen of the future who are of distant Scandinavian origin and one of whom (the villain) is historically conscious – decide to revive this Viking tradition, resorting to a deadly holmgang on a lonely asteroid instead of a sea island, in order to settle their irreconcilable differences over a tangled ...