Vikings

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In 793 a vessel of Northmen landed on the shore of Lindisfarne. These massive brutish mean stormed the shore, to find a beautifully erect monastery waiting to supply their greedy needs. They plundered and pillaged heartlessly as thou there were no soul within them. Their piratish actions left no room for remorse and death in their footsteps. It is hard to escape the medieval view of who the Vikings are. They have been played upon as savages, heartless and hungry, a long with animated versions of brave warriors for children’s sake. In truth the Vikings have been many things and historians have in fact proved that raids began before Lindisfarne in 793. However, neither the Vikings nor their “victims” escaped the long the impact on Europe.
The term “Viking” was originally a concept and sometimes was used as a verb, “to go Viking”, which implied to raid. The term later came to be used as an ethnic term to describe the people of the North as a whole. Nevertheless, Vikings were merchants, warriors, labors, poets, inquisitors, and industrious. The Vikings made much of their permanent residents in Scandinavia, Ireland, parts of England, France, and Spain from the late ninth century to the eleventh century, although, Viking settlements can be found into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Scandinavian culture even traveled to the North Atlantic to discover North America approximately five centuries prior to the voyage of Christopher Columbus. This venture was short lived due to the inability to repopulate the new land. Many Scandinavian social groups remained under their old structures and administrative laws until the tenth century.
In the tenth century, militant leaders had been to Europe and brought back new ideas from Christian...

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...vidence why historians cannot distinguish a single cause for the Vikings drive to travel. Religion may be a factor but the most common or shared need among these varies groups of Vikings is urban marketing and trade. This is not an answer to the age-old question, “why did they invade”, but insight into “who” they were as a culture of many different identities with similar needs.
The Vikings whether raiders or entrepreneurs, spread and encouraged expansionism and urban development along with trade. Climate change allowed for hybridization with an existing population that produced cultural change. Assimilation between different cultures throughout Europe bred new hybrid identities for the future and created new cultural norms that broke the boundaries of segregation. The Viking invasions not only impacted Europe but influenced and changed Scandinavian culture as well.

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