Viking Age is the term for the period in
European history, especially
Northern European and
Scandinavian history, spanning the eighth to eleventh centuries.
[1][2][3] Scandinavian (
Norse)
Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. The Vikings also reached
Iceland,
Greenland,
Newfoundland, and
Anatolia. Additionally, there is evidence to support the
Vinland legend that Vikings reached farther south to the North American continent.
In England the Viking Age began dramatically on June 8, 793[4] when Norsemen destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, a center of learning famous across the continent. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures. Three Viking ships had beached in Portland Bay four years earlier, but that incursion may have been a trading expedition that went wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different. The Viking devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island shocked and alerted the royal Courts of Europe. "Never before has such an atrocity been seen," declared the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York. More than any other single event, the attack on Lindisfarne cast a shadow on the perception of the Vikings for the next twelve centuries. Not until the 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin seriously to reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, the technological skills and the seamanship.[5]
Until Victoria's reign in Britain, Vikings were portrayed as violent and bloodthirsty. The chronicles of medieval England had always portrayed them as rapacious 'wolves among sheep'. During the nineteenth century, public perceptions changed. In 1920 a winged-helmeted Viking was introduced as a radiator cap figure on a new Rover car. That marked the cultural rehabilitation of the Vikings in Britain.
The first challenges to the many anti-Viking images in Britain emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly works on the Viking Age began to reach a small readership in Britain. Archaeologists began to dig up Britain's Viking past. Linguistic enthusiasts started to work on identifying Viking-Age origins for rural idioms and proverbs. The new dictionaries of the Old Norse language enabled the Victorians to grapple with the primary Icelandic Sagas.
