The Viking Age: The Vikings In The Middle Ages

The Vikings are a group of warriors, traders, and explorers from Scandinavia, now know as Sweden, Norway, and Finland. In the Middle Ages, the term Viking meant adventurers and pirates. They would raid Northern European towns and villages and leave absolute destruction in their paths

What was the Viking Age: The Vikings age was a period of time from 800-1050. During these years Vikings left Scandinavia and raided and European town they could find close to water. The religion that the Vikings followed was Pagan. Although not much is known about this religion, there were chieftains that served as priests and the Vikings also sacrificed horses. They believed in many gods like Odin and Thor. The god 's enemies were the Giants and only Thor could

They first came to Europe to explore, but then they found poorly defended monasteries filled with many riches. So the Vikings decided to attack and destroy any settlement that was close to water. According to medieval writers, the first Viking raid in Europe was in a monastery called Lindisfarne. There is a primary source describing the attack: "And they came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted feet, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers; some they took away with them in fetters; many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults; and some they drowned in the sea". Vikings weapons and armor were similar to medieval Europe. They wore iron helmets and chain mail. They had shields made of wood with various designs on them. They had swords, spears, and axes for hand weapons. To get to they village they were attacking, Vikings would use longships. The longships could be 23 meters long. They had a small sail in the middle with many oars on the sides. They could navigate very easily and go go into as little as three feet of water to attack villages