8th Century Denmark Research Paper

The people from the north, Norsemen, lived in villages and on dispersed farms in various regions. The Norwegian Vikings were from Iceland and Ireland. The Danish Vikings were from France and Britain. The Swedish Vikings were from Russia. Regardless of region, Vikings are addressed as one group of people. Written documentation from this era, sagas specify the region of Vikings being recorded.

A virulent plague consumed millions of corpses; war raged on for multiple generations, and famine struck an overpopulated Europe. Even as many tragedies befell the European people, the crisis of fourteenth century eventually proved itself to be a blessing in disguise, albeit a very lethal one. The first hardship, the Little Ice Age, afflicted northern Europe in 1315 and reached the south by 1347, creating a dearth of food. The Black Death then wiped out a third of European inhabitants in the middle of the century. Many wars erupted, but the Hundred Years War between England and France resulted in the most deaths and caused heavy taxation for these countries from 1337 to 1452. The Ottoman Turks began to attack European settlements in the east,

793, with “... an attack on the Lindisfarne monastery off the coast of Northumberland in northeastern England…”(“Vikings”). The Vikings continued their the raids on Great Britain over several decades, and by the mid-ninth century they had control over the Northern Isles of Scotland, most of mainland Scotland, and the Hebrides. During the attacks on England, “Viking armies...conquered East Anglia and Northumberland and dismantled Merica, while…King Alfred the Great...became the only king to...defeat a Danish army…”(“Vikings”). In A.D. 878, Alfred the Great made a truce with the Vikings, and a treaty was made around A.D. 886 that most of England was under the control of the Danish. The Vikings rule over England ended around A.D. 952 when Erik Bloodaxe, the last Scandinavian king, was killed. After the death of Erik Bloodaxe, England was united into a single kingdom. The Vikings began raiding England again in A.D. 991, and reconquered the English kingdom in A.D. 1013. The new and powerful Scandinavian empire, composed of England, Denmark, and Norway, was ruled by Canute, the son of Sven Forkbeard, leader of the Viking raids on England that started in A.D. 991. The Vikings lost control over England again in A.D. 1066 when William, Duke of Normandy was crowned the king of England. William, Duke of Normandy’s crowning marked the end of the Viking

Their society did not revolve or rely on a central government. According to the secondary source 2.3, historians know that at the very top of the social hierarchy is the King who had a lot of authority. Viking kings were powerful leaders who ruled Scandinavian lands. In order to maintain this power, a chieftain had to gain followers who agreed to support him. Below the king was a small aristocratic group called the Jarls. They lived an ‘upper-class life’. Below the Jarls were a group called the Karls. They formed the majority of the population. They were considered ‘freemen’, meaning they were allowed to own land, slaves to work for them, build property, and start a family and/or a business. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the slaves called thralls who were either captured in raids or purchased from traders in the marketplace. They were considered the property of their owners. The Norse had an oral culture and therefore had both law and government without written law. All free men (Karls) would gather in their communities in a meeting called a Thing. Rather than have all disputes settled by duel or family feuds, the Thing was established to both make laws and to decide cases of disputes within the law. The Thing met at specific and regular times. Each Thing had a law speaker who would recite the law from memory. The law speaker and the local chieftain would judge and settle the cases of

The fierce competition over the scarce, barren land of Scandinavia encouraged many of the Vikings to leave their homeland. Viking society grew rapidly as they began to run into considerable complications with their land. In Viking Scandinavia, “as the population increased, so did warfare, as regional Viking kings competed for the few resources available” (Hubbard 94). Because Scandinavian terrain was rough and mountainous, habitable land was a scarce resource. The lack of available land often led to many disputes between neighboring kings. In an attempt to cease the fighting, the kings began expanding their territory by conquering other lands across Europe, the British Isles, and Greenland. Moving to these new lands gave the Vikings space to continue to expand their nation, enabling them to gain power over other territories. Not only was there limited land in Scandinavia, but little of it was functional. The mountainous land in Scandinavia was not suitable for farming as it was unfit for growing crops (“Viking Age”). The Vikings

The Viking Age is typically recorded in history as occurring approximately around 793 AD to 1066 AD. This period of time is not the time span of the Norse people themselves, nor was it the peak of their civilization. This is merely the height of the time when the Norse people were mostly written about. The time when they reached out and went out on viking adventures. A time when the World noticed them and were

My first topic I’ll talk about is war,warriors and weaponry of the vikings. The vikings were a society that would invade to get land and resources. They would go around in their longships and attempt to invade countries or states they felt they had a good chance against. Some countries they invaded were France, Spain, Netherlands, Greenland, Iceland, North America and Germany. When the vikings invaded parts of Great Britain they influenced Britain’s culture and society. This may have changed the course of history, because than Britain went on to invade and colonise many other countries such as Australia. This source just shows how aggressively they fought and how superior they were. A rather wealthy viking would usually have a spear, a wooden

Before the 8th century B.C., a person was identified by the oikos to which he belonged, and as a result, he was first and foremost loyal to his oikos. As the formation of city-states began, a person was no longer identified by his oikos but instead by the city-state in which he dwelled. And, his loyalty to a certain group of people shifted to the people who were a part of his city-state.

Come and take journey back into time where worlds collide, kingdoms fall, and armies rise. Perhaps the biggest clash of worlds has to be the Viking world versus eighth century Europe. Roger Collins says in his book Early Medieval Europe 300-1000 that there is no way to know if the Vikings raided Europe for specific reasons such as “overpopulation, climatic deterioration, or other ecological changes affecting Scandinavia”

The final stretch of the 10th century into the advent of the 11th had seen significant changes among the Jutland region that had set up a new status quo for the new millennium. The previous centuries had seen the region consisting of a collection of warlords leading their own personal clans. The Viking age had seen these warlords expanding outwards, sailing out to ravage foreign communities to colonize and bring back slaves and resources. By the end of millennium, however, several factors, most notably the strengthened central powers in the Viking’s favored pillaging location, Western Europe, resulted in a decline in Viking raids and an impetus for Viking warlords to look locally to expand their wealth. The spread of Christianity through the Danish areas was strengthened by this incentive to control local resources, new expertise in manipulating resources that was brought along with foreign missionaries was welcomed. It is then under Harald Bluetooth, son of the first historically recognized King of Denmark, Gorm the Old, who ruled in western Jutland, that the Danes were officially united and converted to Christianity in a kingdom that extended through most of the Jutland peninsula, the Danish Isles, and up into the area of what is now Sweden. The Viking Age officially ended around 1086 with the death of King Canut IV, who attempts to re-conquer England, which had been under Danish control from 1014 to 1035, were subdued before they even started by an angry peasantry, chafing under the many tithes added to pay for religious monuments and the stifling nature of

The Kingdom of Denmark was founded by viking king, Gorm the Old in the tenth century. This means that the current queen, Queen Margrethe II, is a descendant from vikings! Gorm’s son Harald Bluetooth helped unify Denmark geographically, and emotionally. Bluetooth and his descendants would assist England and Norway to do the

The Vikings were people of Nordic origin, whose expansion led to the conquering of much of Europe, and the colonization of Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. Three main reasons for their expansion include: Escaping emerging Christian rule in their homeland; expansionism fueled by raiding and resources in the homeland becoming scarce, and in Leif Erikson’s journey to make a name for himself.

Sweden is sitting in a blue chair in his living room in Stockholm, he received the news from Iceland well over an hour ago. Yet, he still can't make himself stand up. He just stares down at his hands and lets out slow, shaky breathes. He is trying to figure out what has just happened. He never would have been too surprised to find out a country has committed suicide, what will all the wars and everything else, but Denmark? He couldn’t even begin to think why.

From the 8th century to the 11th century, the Vikings, used their stronghold in the Scandinavian Peninsula, to exploit westward to Iceland and Greenland, even Canada, southward to mainland Western Europe and southwestward to Britain and Ireland. Tyranny and poor living conditions might be the main reasons for their invasions (Owen 1999 10). There were two invader sources, one was from Norway called ‘Norse’, the other was from Denmark called ‘Danelaw’. At the beginning of the Vikings’ expansion, piracy and trade were the dominant elements, however, after a period of time, they began to settle down in their colonies, such as Britain, France, Ireland and Russia.

Derry, T. K. A History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1979. Print.