The Viking Age
Scandinavian raiders, traders and settlers reach from Newfoundland to Baghdad.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 273 years
- Known to
- ± 2 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
The raid on Lindisfarne in 793 opens three centuries of Norse expansion. Their shallow-draught ships allow them to raid far up rivers, and the same mobility makes them traders and settlers: they take England's north, settle Normandy and Iceland, found Dublin, establish Kievan Rus, sell furs and enslaved people in Baghdad, reach Greenland by 985 and North America around 1000. The image of purely destructive raiders is a monastic one.