Vikings is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean, North Africa, Volga Bulgaria, the Middle East, and North America.
Expert sailors and navigators aboard 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 modern-day Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, where they were also known as Varangians. The Normans, Norse-Gaels, Rus' people, 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, attacked the Byzantine city of Constantinople. Vikings also voyaged to Iran and Arabia. They were the first Europeans to reach North America, briefly settling in Newfoundland (Vinland). While spreading Norse culture to foreign lands, they simultaneously brought home slaves, concubines and foreign cultural influences to Scandinavia, influencing the genetic and historical development of both. During the Viking Age, the Norse homelands were gradually consolidated from smaller kingdoms into three larger kingdoms: Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
The Vikings spoke Old Norse and made inscriptions in runes. For most of the period they followed the Old Norse religion, but later became Christians. The Vikings had their own laws, art and architecture. Most Vikings were also farmers, fishermen, craftsmen and traders. Popular conceptions of the Vikings often strongly differ from the complex, advanced civilisation of the Norsemen that emerges from archaeology and historical sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to emerge in the 18th century; this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival. Perceived views of the Vikings as violent, piratical heathens or as intrepid adventurers owe much to conflicting varieties of the modern Viking myth that had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations of the Vikings are typically based on cultural clichés and stereotypes, complicating modern appreciation of the Viking legacy. These representations are rarely accurate-for example, there is no evidence that they wore horned helmets, a costume element that first appeared in Wagnerian opera.
Original meaning and derivation of the word Viking
One theory suggests that the word's origin is from the Old English wicing and the Old Frisian wizing that are almost 300 years older, and probably derive from wic, related to the Latin vicus "village, habitation". Another less popular theory is that víking came from the feminine vík, meaning "creek, inlet, small bay". It has been suggested that the word viking may be derived from the name of the historical Norwegian district of Víkin, meaning "a person from Víkin", but people from the Viken area were called víkverir, ('Vík dwellers'), not "Viking", in Old Norse manuscripts. The explanation could explain only the masculine grammatical gender (víkingr) and not the feminine (víking); the masculine is more easily derived from the feminine than the other way around.
Another etymology that gained support in the early 21st century derives Viking from the same root as Old Norse vika, f. 'sea mile', originally meaning 'the distance between two shifts of rowers', from the root *weik or *wîk, as in the Proto-Germanic verb *wîkan, 'to recede'. This is found in the Proto-Nordic verb *wikan, 'to turn', similar to Old Icelandic víkja (ýkva, víkva) 'to move, to turn', with well-attested nautical usages. Linguistically, this theory is better attested, and the term most likely predates the use of the sail by the Germanic peoples of northwestern Europe, because the Old Frisian spelling Witsing or Wīsing shows that the word was pronounced with a palatal k and thus in all probability existed in North-Western Germanic before that palatalisation happened in the 5th century or before (in the western branch).
The Old Norse feminine víking (as in the phrase fara í víking) may originally have been a long-distance sea journey characterised by the shifting of rowers, and a víkingr (masculine gender) would originally have been a participant on such a sea journey. In that case, the idea behind it seems to be that the tired rower moves aside on the thwart when he is relieved by the rested rower. This implies that the word Viking was not originally connected to Scandinavian seafarers, but assumed this meaning when the Scandinavians began to dominate the seas. Even the word vikingr did not necessarily possess negative overtones nor was it always associated with violence, and only in the post-Viking age would negative overtones be attached to the word.
English
English
The earliest reference to wicing in English sources is from the Épinal-Erfurt glossary which dates to around 700. The glossary's Latin translation for wicing is piraticum, or pirate in modern English. Whereas the first known attack by Viking raiders in England was at Lindisfarne about 93 years later. In Old English, the word wicing appears in the Anglo-Saxon poem, Widsith, probably from the 9th century. The word was not regarded as a reference to nationality, with other terms such as Norþmenn (Northmen) and Dene (Danes) being used for that. In Asser's Latin work, The Life of King Alfred, the Danes are referred to as pagani (pagans); historian Janet Nelson asserts that pagani has become 'the Vikings' throughout the standard translation of this work, even though there is "clear evidence" that it was used as a synonym for Danes, while Eric Christiansen avers that it is a mistranslation made at the insistence of the publisher. The word wicing does not occur in any preserved Middle English texts.
Scandinavia
The form occurs as a personal name on some Swedish runestones. The stone of Tóki víking (Sm 10) was raised in memory of a local man named Tóki who got the name Tóki víking (Toki the Viking), presumably because of his activities as a Viking. The Gårdstånga Stone (DR 330) uses the phrase "Þeʀ drængaʀ waʀu wiða unesiʀ i wikingu" (These valiant men were widely renowned on viking raids), referring to the stone's dedicatees as Vikings. The Västra Strö 1 Runestone has an inscription in memory of a Björn, who was killed when "on a viking raid". In Sweden there is a locality known since the Middle Ages as Vikingstad. The Bro Stone (U 617) was raised in memory of Assur who is said to have protected the land from Vikings (Saʀ vaʀ vikinga vorðr með Gæiti). There is little indication of any negative connotation in the term before the end of the Viking Age. In eastern Europe, of which parts were ruled by a Norse elite, víkingr came to be perceived as a positive concept meaning "hero" in the Russian borrowed form vityaz'.
Other sources
In the history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontifi, written by Adam of Bremen and completed in the 1080s, the term generally referred to Scandinavian pirates or raiders.
Modern usage
The word Viking was introduced into Modern English during the 18th-century Viking revival, at which point it acquired romanticised heroic overtones of "barbarian warrior" or noble savage. During the 20th century, the meaning of the term was expanded to refer not only to seaborne raiders from Scandinavia and other places settled by them (like Iceland and the Faroe Islands), but also any member of the culture that produced the raiders during the period from the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries, or more loosely from about 700 to as late as about 1100. As an adjective, the word is used to refer to ideas, phenomena, or artefacts connected with those people and their cultural life, producing expressions like Viking age, Viking culture, Viking art, Viking religion, Viking ship and so on.
Other names
Europe in 814. Roslagen is located along the coast of the northern tip of the pink area marked "Swedes and Goths".
The Vikings were known as Ascomanni ("ashmen") by the Germans for the ash wood of their boats, Dubgail and Finngail ( "dark and fair foreigners") by the Irish, Lochlannaich ("people from the land of lakes") by the Gaels Dene (Dane) by the Anglo-Saxons and Northmonn by the Frisians.
The scholarly consensus is that the Rus' people originated in what is currently coastal eastern Sweden around the eighth century and that their name has the same origin as Roslagen in Sweden (with the older name being Roden). According to the prevalent theory, the name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden, as it was known in earlier times. The name Rus' would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi.
The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them Varangians (Russian: варяги, from Old Norse Væringjar 'sworn men', from vàr- "confidence, vow of fealty", related to Old English wær "agreement, treaty, promise", Old High German wara "faithfulness"). Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard. The Rus' initially appeared in Serkland in the 9th century, travelling as merchants along the Volga trade route, selling furs, honey, and slaves, as well as luxury goods such as amber, Frankish swords, and walrus ivory. These goods were mostly exchanged for Arabian silver coins, called dirhams. Hoards of 9th century Baghdad-minted silver coins have been found in Sweden, particularly in Gotland.
During and after the Viking raid on Seville in 844 CE the Muslim chroniclers of al-Andalus referred to the Vikings as Magians, conflating them with Zoroastrians from Persia. When Ahmad ibn Fadlan encountered Vikings on the Volga, he referred to them as Rus.
The Franks normally called them Northmen or Danes, while for the English they were generally known as Danes or heathen and the Irish knew them as pagans or gentiles.
Anglo-Scandinavian is an academic term referring to the people, and archaeological and historical periods during the 8th to 13th centuries, in which there was migration to-and occupation of-the British Isles by Scandinavian peoples generally known in English as Vikings. It is used in distinction from Anglo-Saxon. Similar terms exist for other areas, such as Hiberno-Norse for Ireland and Scotland.
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