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A Viking is one of the Norse (Scandinavian) explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the late eighth to the early eleventh century.[1] These Norsemen used their famed longships to travel as far east as Constantinople and the Volga River in Russia, and as far west as Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. This period of Viking expansion is known as the Viking Age, and forms a major part of the medieval history of Scandinavia, the British Isles and Europe in general. A romanticized picture of Vikings as Germanic noble savages emerged in the 17th century, and especially during the Victorian era Viking revival, in Britain taking the form of Septentrionalism, in Germany that of "Wagnerian" pathos or even Germanic mysticism, and in the Scandinavian countries that of Romantic nationalism or Scandinavism. These clichéd depictions in contemporary popular culture are often ironised to the effect of presenting Vikings as cartoonish characters. In Old Norse, the word is spelled víkingr,[2] [3] "a man from the vik".[4] Viken was the old name of the region bordering on the Skagerrak, from where the first Norse merchant-warriors originated. The Swedish county bordering on the Skagerrak, which is now called Bohuslän, was, prior to the construction of the Bohus fortress, also called Vikland. Vikland was once a part of the Norse district of Viken. Later on, the term, Viking, became synonymous with "naval expedition" or "naval raid", and a víking was a member of such expeditions. A second etymology suggested that the term is derived from Old English, wíc, ie. "trading city" (cognate to Latin vicus, "village"). Etymologists trace the word to Anglo-Frankish writers, who referred to "víkingr" as one who set about to raid and pillage,[5] as in the saga of Egil Skallagrimsson. In current Scandinavian languages, the term Viking is applied to the people who went away on Viking expeditions, be it for raiding or trading. In English and many other languages, Viking might refer to the Viking Age Scandinavians in general.[6] The pre-Christian Scandinavian population is also referred to as Norse, although that term is properly applied to the whole civilization of Old-Norse-speaking people.
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