VIKINGS: RULERS OF THE MEDIEVAL SEAS

Savannah Foster
AP World History
Mr. Brown
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06/06/17

Even in today’s society, the Vikings have a strong hold in our imagination. A period of

over 200 years 1, yet so much of our knowledge is based on more fiction than fact.We only

perceive Vikings as the ruthless Scandinavian barbarians who would do anything to get their

hands on some riches. While that was a part of the Viking lifestyle, their culture is actually rich

and fascinating. The shipwrights2 of the Viking age continue to amaze us with their advanced

and efficient ship designs, which added to their almost complete domination of the seas. They

eventually settled down and developed an advanced trading system before eventually falling to

the more powerful armies of the time. While the Viking age may have been brief, it has enough

rich culture to last for several centuries.

The first recorded Viking attacks occurred around the year 793 AD. These first attacks

targeted Christian monasteries, which lead people to believe that because of their Pagan beliefs,

Vikings didn’t like Christians. Historians now believe that because of their many riches and low

defenses, monasteries were the perfect targets for their kind of pillaging. While historians aren’t

quite sure what caused the Viking age, there are a few hypotheses. One most widely accepted is

due to rapid climate change. Sometime in the middle ages, a sudden temperature increase caused

Scandinavian population to grow quickly. Once the weather cooled again, the land wasn’t fertile

enough to feed this new increase in population, forcing them into a lifestyle of pillaging for

survival. The Europeans saw the Vikings as ruthless because their only exposure was to their

raids.

1 800 AD - 1066 AD, http://www.viking.no/e/etimeline.htm

2 A builder of ships.
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The Vikings are known for their ruthless pillaging. But why were they so ruthless and

untouchable for several years? The answer is one word: ships. Viking ships were an important

part of their society as a whole. Ships were on their currency, their art, even some of their

jewelry had images of ships! When a chieftain, king, or other important figure passed away, the

citizens would light a ship on fire with his body and set it out to sea. Not only did the ships allow

them to travel around the seas, but a ship usually showed off its owner’s status. The ship design

was revolutionary for its time. One’s called “longships” or “dragon-ships”3 were usually very

long and thin to allow to fast, smooth travel across the ocean. Every ship had a giant sail to catch

the wind easily. If their was no wind, the crew would row the boat along. These were the main

ships they used for raids, as it could be pushed onto the sand for smooth exit and pushed back in

the water for a quick escape. Speed was a crucial part of Viking raid. As the Vikings often went

off into small groups, they had to make it out with their loot before the area could assemble an

army. If an area fought back against the Vikings, the Vikings almost always lost due to a lack of

defenses.

Another way the Vikings were unlike other civilizations at the time were their gender

roles. They had the traditional roles where everything inside was handled by the woman while

everything outside was handled by the man. A woman was lawfully under control by her husband

or father. However, Viking women were actually quite respected in their society. As their

husbands were often away on raids, women took over the duties of the man. They could request a

divorce, own property, even reclaim any money they brought to a marriage if it ended in divorce.

If their husband died, the woman would take over his role permanently, managing the trading

3 They also had ships designed for cargo called knörr.

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business or family farm. One extreme example of this would be Aud the Deep-Minded. The

daughter of a Norwegian chieftain, she married a Viking king in Dublin. After her husband and

son died, she took her grandchildren on a voyage to Iceland, where she became one of the area’s

most important settlers. She was so prominent in that area that when she passed away, she was

buried in a ship set out to sea, which was an honor usually reserved for high ranking chieftains or

warriors. Icelandic sagas, or long stories of heroic achievement, focused most on the men

unsurprisingly. But when women were featured, they were strong characters who were not only

praised for their beauty, but their wisdom too. Courage and honor were also seen as positive

traits in women, which was uncommon, especially for their time.4 Women also influenced their

husbands. If they wanted them to go to war, they would use divorce as a means to push them on.

Women also stopped unwanted fights between chieftains or other Vikings. It was extremely

taboo to harm a woman or give her unwanted attention. This could result in a huge fine or death.

However, this courtesy only applied to their own Viking women. Women encountered on raids

were fair game to be captured, sold as slaves, even raped.

Vikings’ raids were much more prevalent at the start of their age. This was when most

towns were right on the coastlines and fairly undefended, making it the perfect targets for

Vikings’ fast moving ships. But, as time went on, towns moved further inland and started

building defenses with assembled armies nearby. Small, easily raided towns became fewer and

fewer, until the Vikings could no longer depend on raiding as a reliable source of income. This

started the massive trade route the Norse developed, stretching from Greenland to Baghdad and

everything in between. Only about 1-2% of the population lived in trade towns, but it impacted

4 http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/society/text/women.htm
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the economy greatly. Specialties such as blacksmiths and other trades were able to profit from

foreign trade as they weren’t constricted to their small domestic trading. The Vikings were also

seasoned explorers. With ships reaching France, Italy, North Africa, Britain, and Spain, the

Vikings were definitely well spread. Some traders and merchants would even travel across Asia

just for foreign goods. Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland were all discovered by Vikings. A

Viking called Eric the Red was exiled by the Icelandic people and traveled west to find a new

land to settle in. He discovered a land much more vast than Iceland, but also much more colder.

He named it Greenland in hopes the name would attract farmers, but not many ended up living

there. In 985, a Viking named Bjarni Herjolfsson was on his way to Greenland when a sudden

wind blew his ship off course. He saw an unknown land but did not investigate. 16 years later,

Herjolfsson son, Leif Ericsson, sailed west to find his father’s land. This made them the first

Europeans in America, before Christopher Columbus.

The decline of the Viking age came when the raids stopped. 5 Historians widely recognize

1066 as a specific marker for the end. This was the year of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, where

the Norwegian king Haraldr harðráði was killed as he tried to invade England. The Vikings

weren’t conquered, they just slowly stopped raiding. It was no longer worth the risk or profit.

Thus, ended the Viking Age.

In conclusion, much of the Vikings culture and society was and still is shrouded in

mystery. But the fact remains true that they were much more than ruthless, pillaging barbarians.

They developed extensive trading routes, built ships that we still admire today, and discovered

5 http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/society/text/what_happened.htm
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the world before anyone else. Although their time was brief, the Vikings left a lasting imprint on

our world today.


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Bibliography

Short, William. “The Role of Women in Viking Society” Hurstwic. 1999. http://
www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/society/text/women.htm.

Short, William. “Viking Ships” Hurstwic. 1999. http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/

manufacturing/text/norse_ships.htm.

Winroth, Anders. The Age of the Vikings. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
2014.

McCoy, Daniel. “Viking Trade and Commerce” 2012. http://norse-mythology.org/viking-trade-

commerce/