Vikings: Pirates or Traders? Or Something Else Altogether by Richard Sweeney

[Dept of PMM Artists & things]

The first indication that the Europeans had of the people called the Vikings was when the frightening dragon-headed longboats appeared off the coast. The Europeans were not prepared to repel the invading warriors and

 after the first attacks in 793 the attacks became a common occurrence for the next 200 years. Who were they? Pirates? Traders?

Vikings attacked the lands around them, especially Britain and France, raid the food stores and kidnapping people to make slaves. The people who lived in the isolated villages of the coast live in fear of the Viking attacks. They were mostly farmers or fishermen and unaccustomed to battle. They began adding a protection from the "northmen" to their litany of daily prayers.

In certain places the Vikings got their food and goods from trading rather than raiding. The trading villages were of course always stronger and more capable of defending against Viking incursion. The Viking trade routes went as far south as the Black Sea where they traded furs, jewelry, and slaves for spices and wine.

Vikings were outstanding seamen and used ships for traveling over lakes, seas, and fjords of Scandinavia. The ships were classified by the number of oars they employed. A faering, the smallest, used about four while the longship would brandish about 32. A bigger longship might be nearly 100 feet longs and travel about 20 miles per hour under a full sail. It says a lot of Viking culture that their language contains dozens of ways to say ship or boat. The Vikings navigated by watching the stars and the sun, charting landmarks, and watching for birds.

Viking children had no form of academic education. They learned lessons form long stories called sagas. Sagas, usually, told stories about the adventures or the gods or great Viking heroes, these stories taught children history, geography, and navigation. They stories were especially popular during the winter when everyone huddled around the fire.

Vikings were not just skilled soldiers and seamen, they were self reliant farmers and craftsmen who were able to grow or make the materials they needed for daily life. Even small children were likely to have a job on

 the farm.

Viking women worked the farm and wove material for clothes and blankets on looms and managed the farms while their husbands were "a Viking". Viking homes were made of timber planks and woven branches with thatched roofs. In places like Shetland and Iceland there was no wood so stone was used. No walls separated rooms; they were sectioned off by stretching cloth or animal skins from beams or between poles. A farm would have a house or if the family was large two and sheds for the animals, a workshop for the forge, and smaller huts for slaves.

Vikings were skilled craftsmen, working stone, wood, and metal into beautiful objects. The same forge that word craft swords and plows one day might make a brooch or torque the next. With no banks, so Vikings often wore their wealth as jewelry. Smiths of high caliber were much respected which possible lead to Thor, one of the most important Viking gods, wielding a smith's hammer.

When European influenced found it way to Scandinavia the Viking way of life began to decline. Christianity had an early and increasing effect on the culture of Scandinavia, and with the ascension of centralized power along with a strengthening of coastal security in the regions the Vikings usually raided, the Viking raids became more perilous and less lucrative. When the kings and great nobles and a quasi-feudal system in Scandinavia, they ceased entirely.

 

 

[PerseH ~Staff Wrangler~]

Ohhhh Vikings.