Who Was When

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VikingsVíkingar

EuropeHeartland today: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden

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Scandinavian farmers, traders and raiders whose fast, shallow-drafted longships carried them from Newfoundland to Baghdad. At home they were mostly settled farmers with their own law-courts and sagas; abroad, for a few violent centuries, they raided monasteries, founded towns and even sat on the thrones of England and Kyiv.

Also alive at the same time

Key events

  1. Norse raiders attack the monastery at Lindisfarne, the first recorded Viking raid on Britain

    Sources

    • Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 793.
    • Brink, Stefan & Price, Neil (eds) (2008). The Viking World. Routledge.
  2. Norse settlers establish a longphort, a ship fortress, that grows into the town of Dublin

    Sources

    • Wallace, Patrick F. (2016). Viking Dublin: The Wood Quay Excavations. Irish Academic Press.
    • Clarke, H.B. et al. (eds) (1998). Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age. Four Courts Press.
  3. Rus traders and warriors, of Scandinavian origin, establish princely rule over Slavic towns along the river routes to ByzantiumDisputed

    The "Normanist" account of Scandinavian founders is drawn from the Russian Primary Chronicle, written over two centuries later, and the extent of Norse versus Slavic contribution to Kyivan Rus is still argued.

    Sources

    • Franklin, S. & Shepard, J. (1996). The Emergence of Rus 750-1200. Longman.
    • Primary Chronicle (Russian Primary Chronicle), entry for 862.
  4. – The Great Heathen Army invades England, conquering three of its four kingdoms before Alfred the Great halts it

    Sources

    • Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entries 865-878.
    • Downham, C. (2007). Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014. Dunedin Academic Press.
  5. Norse voyagers led by Leif Erikson reach North America and briefly settle at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

    Sources

  6. – Cnut the Great rules England, Denmark and Norway together as a single North Sea empire

    Sources

    • Lawson, M.K. (2004). Cnut: England's Viking King. Tempus.
    • Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entries 1016-1035.
  7. England defeats a Norwegian invasion at Stamford Bridge, then falls to the Normans at Hastings weeks later, conventionally closing the Viking Age

    Sources

    • Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entries for 1066.
    • DeVries, K. (1999). The Norwegian Invasion of England in 1066. Boydell Press.