For the people of Europe in the early medieval era, the story of the Vikings was one of unexpected and naked violence, of the triumph of the strong and ruthless, and of the suffering of the weak and innocent. The prelude to this epic tale of woe was rooted in late ancient times. In the final century of the Roman Empire, spanning the 400s A. D., tribal peoples from across northern Europe began migrating. Searching for new lands, economic opportunities, and often simply booty, they steadily invaded, overran, and absorbed the empire's outlying provinces. As a result, in the year 476 that realm officially ceased to exist.
This was only the beginning of the bedlam, disorder, and instability Europe was destined to suffer. "With the collapse of the Roman Empire," British Museum scholar David M. Wilson remarks, "the movements [of peoples] became almost frenetic. Huns, Goths,
Vandals, wave upon wave of tribes, moved across Europe, giving momentum to the peoples of the continent."1
In time, these huge folk migrations finally ran their course. By the late 700s A. D. large sections of Europe had finally settled down and become relatively stable. The era of peace proved to be tragically short-lived, however. In the late eighth century a new source of mayhem and insecurity appeared, this one centered in Scandinavia, the region now encompassed by Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Marauding bands of raiders from those lands descended on Europe. They had various names, including Norse, Norsemen, and Northmen. But they were (and still are) better known as the Vikings.
The Viking raiders typically struck quickly and with overwhelming force. They stole, pillaged, and frequently murdered with abandon. These raiders struck fear into the hearts of people in many
A band of Viking raiders loots a European village, spreading destruction and fear.
Lands, stretching from England and Ireland in the west, across Europe, to what are now Russia and Iran in the east. In the two and a half centuries that followed— the so-called Viking Age—people of diverse cultures and languages had reason to express sentiments like those of an anonymous medieval Irish chronicler. Even if there were a hundred "loud, unceasing voices from each tongue," he said,
They could not recount or narrate. . . what all the Irish suffered in common, both men and women, laity and clergy, old and young, noble and ignoble, of hardships and of injuring and of oppression, in every house, from those valiant, wrathful, purely pagan people [the Vikings] because of the greatness of their achievements and of their deeds, their bravery, and their. . . strength, and their venom, and their ferocity.2
World History
