Introduction

The Vikings, those medieval Scandinavian warriors who launched ferocious and much-lamented attacks on western Europe, continue to evoke vivid images and lively public interest today, some 1,200 years after they first came to the attention of contemporary monastic chroniclers. One only has to search for the word Viking on the Internet to realize the extent of this enduring popularity and to see just how valuable a commodity it has become in 21st-century commerce and tourism. This is perhaps rather surprising given that popular images of the Vikings nearly always begin with swords, axes, helmets (see weapons), ships, pillage, looting, and of course slaughter and destruction. This bad press dates right back to the earliest sources for the Vikings, where the Christian victims of their attacks complained about the destruction inflicted on their churches and congregations, and perhaps this supports the idea that there is no such thing as bad publicity!

However, the enduring interest in the Vikings lies not only in their reputation as barbarians who harried the Christian civilization of western Europe. In the 19th century, Romantic artists, musicians, and writers were interested in the heroism of these warriors, who were free and unbound by the constraints of later feudal structures, who were loyal to their brothers-in-arms, who would continue to fight even if the odds were against them, and who sailed overseas in search of adventure. This heroic Viking figure was equipped with appropriately dramatic trappings, most notably the horned or even winged helmet (which in fact seems to have had a ritual rather than battle purpose in early Germanic cultures) and the double-headed battle-ax. Translations of Icelandic sagas allowed international audiences to read about the pioneering society established by these Vikings in the North Atlantic: a collection of free men, ruled by their own laws rather than a king, on the very fringes of the habitable world—a society that had undoubted appeal to Europe and North America, where new ideas of personal liberty and universal suffrage were beginning to take hold.

Under the impact of modern scholarship, particularly archaeological excavations, this image of the free and heroic Viking has been supplemented with other, perhaps more everyday, images. The raider might also have been a trader, who traveled about selling goods, and a colonist, who left his homeland behind him and began a new and peaceful life in a different country. Archaeological finds have revealed that Viking craftsmen produced elaborate and beautiful jewelry and sculpture, as well as weapons, and the technical skill of the Viking shipwright was second to none. There are also the large numbers of Scandinavians who chose to stay at home, those who supported the conversion of their compatriots to Christianity, and the social groups neglected by written sources: women, children, the poor, and the enslaved. None of these Vikings are so attention-grabbing as the more dramatic warrior figures, but our knowledge about these people and their lives certainly helps to paint a more complex and realistic image of the period and also to explain why people continue to find the Viking Age a compelling and fascinating period to study.