The Viking Age in England is said (Magnusson,1980) to have begun around 800 as the Vikings started to expand to which is now the United Kingdom and ended in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings as William the Conqueror defeated the Anglo-Saxons and forced them out of England. The Vikings however were traders as much as they were barbarians -- so if one way didn't work, the other way would.
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| Map of the Homelands of the Vikings, drawn by T. Schaefer. |
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The homeland of the Vikings is what is now Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark, with settlements also in Iceland and Greenland. Because the Vikings traded or pillaged so much, they migrated and settled into the lands which are now called France, to Russia, to the city of Constantinople, to Newfoundland, and an attempted settlement in Vinland (North America). The Vikings were a very far-ranging people and were integrating themselves into the societies where they traded or pillaged. The natural land barriers, to what is now Russia and Europe, were mountains and marshes at Finland from Russia and the North Sea at Norway. The terrain of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark is either rocky and mountainous or low level marshes.
| A Viking longship, drawn by T. Schaefer. A tent could be drawn over the rowers' stations. |
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The main form of transportation for the Vikings was sailing. Because they traveled so far for trade and plunder, travel by land was too slow, ineffective, and the rocky or swampy terrain discouraged travel by land. Although they did tame horses, sailing ships was better for the Vikings' disposition. There never was a well organized system of roads for the Vikings except for stone-laid paths made before the Viking Age. In poetry, Viking sailors and their ships were referred to as "oar-steered," "horse of the breakers," "ocean-striding bison," a "surf-dragon," a "fjord-elk," or a "horse of the lobster's health," and a fleet was a "fleet of the otter's world" (Magnusson, 1980). The Vikings' most famous ship was the longship which had a single sail and could be driven by the oarsmen and steered by a simple rudder. Very early ships, however, were wooden frames covered with skins and propelled manually. The ships, after being decommissioned, were burned and buried in a religious ceremony.
The Vikings also devised a way of ice-skating called islegger, meaning: ice leg-bone. It was a leg bone cut to form a foot hold and the skaters would propel themselves with poles (Magnusson, 1980).
| How Vikings are thought of Today, drawn by T. Schaefer. |
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As in most ancient societies, there were farmers and other craftsmen, but the main source of income was trading and thieving. The Vikings mostly don't get historical credit for being traders but instead are known as greedy raiders. These people were more tribal than well organized under a single ruler and surplus goods were never greatly in abundance, but goods plundered or obtained became exports. They used gold, silver, and bronze for coinage but this coinage was mainly made by the individual clans.
| Vikings get more credit for being pillagers than for trading. Drawn by T. Schaefer | 
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Every tribe or clan had skilled craftsmen such as goldsmiths, blacksmiths, carpenters, ship builders, and chieftains--which held religious ceremonies as well as organizer duties. The society and the times didn't call upon advancements in technologies, so inventors weren't very common and society didn't need many advancements because they could live fine with what they had.
There were also brilliant stone-carvers who engraved very detailed images or poetry and then placed these stones in formations creating very beautiful landscapes ( Magnusson,1980, p. 106). There were bone-carvers who wrote into bones. They even had bards who memorized epic poems or historical poems about the deeds of kings. There also were fur-trappers which accounted for a decent source of goods.
The daily life of these people was very simple. They had kitchen utensils such as pots and pans, buckets, horse drawn carts, wood axes, cutting knives, cauldrons, glassware, spoons, bowls, and pottery. They had few farmable lands and harvested few cash crops.
Most of their clothes were made of fur or leather and shoes were made of leather with wool insulation (Scott, 1975). They made their houses of wood or stone, with thatched roofs and some farmhouses even had grass-covered roofs. They used tools of wood, bone, and Iron. They created beautiful jewelry of silver and gold and gold jewelry boxes, hair pins, earrings, and necklaces. They ate bread, pancakes, berries, drank beer, and since they were great seafarers, they also caught and had fish in abundance. They made exquisite furniture with intricate designs of animals of boars, wolves, and fierce beasts.
Their burials consisted of placing the dead in mounds and, at low level lands, stone formations were used to remember the dead. They practiced, for kings and other important people, burying with the dead all that deceased persons worldly belongings leaving great excavation finds for archeologists (Arbmay, 1961). The health standards were considerably poor and people died of now curable illnesses such as the influenza virus.
Havamal--Word of the gods:
wealth dies, kinsmen die,This is a good example because it shows what the Vikings felt like and how they reacted to their own mortality. Most poems have been found on sheepskin and weren't written down until after the Viking Age.
a man himself must also die,
but the one thing I know that never dies--
the verdict on each man dead.(Magnusson, 1980, p. 29)
The Vikings had a hero named Sigurd who killed a dragon named Regin. After Sigurd killed Regin, he roasted his heart and blood dripped upon his finger. He ate the blood and gained incredible knowledge. This is common for a Viking Hero because it tells of a single person who does an incredible feat and gains from his journey (Klint-Jensen, 1967)
In conclusion, the Vikings' territories, in their height, expanded from the islands of Svalband in the Barents Sea to the Greenland and Norwegian Seas to the Labrador Sea into the Atlantic Ocean and into parts of Europe and Russia. The Vikings lived simple yet extraordinary lives and even set standards in today's society.
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